


In a Place Like This

by Sarai



Series: Stars from Home [4]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 45,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarai/pseuds/Sarai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott Summers can't escape the past, a thing he knows only as nightmares, the color blue, and an elusive piece of music. Charles Xavier lives for the future, devoted to his soon-to-be-realized dream of a school for mutants. Both must address the present when chaos comes to town--or rather, when Havok does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

In October, 1962, bomb shelters were in the minds of every American.

Eight months later, most were more concerned with stories of the new superspy James Bond, the introduction of diet cola, and—some more than others—Civil Rights actions in the South. The resurgence of the bomb shelter was effectively over.

Not every bomb shelter had been abandoned to gather dust and wait for the next Cold War blister, though. One in particular was still used quite regularly, this one to contain a threat rather than protect against it.

In general they didn't call it containment but training. And since "threat" is a harsh term for a teenage boy who can't help it, mostly he was just called Scott.

That is, when his companion remembered the formality of actually addressing him at all. At the moment Hank was hip-deep in technobabble and since they knew who they were speaking to what was the point? He seemed happiest there, anyway, filling the world for a few moments with the rational, comprehensive world of his own mind, with things like 'manifestation' and 'refraction' and 'hypothesis-based testing'.

Not everyone had Hank's love and understanding of science.

"But will it _work_?"

A note of whine crept into his voice, but Scott's dislike of training was no secret. He wasn't a particularly whiny sort, usually. He accepted any chore or math assignment with no more than a nod, but the closer he came to the bomb shelter, the more visible the battle between his desire for approval and his dislike of his mutation.

So Hank ignored the whiny tone and replied matter-of-factly, "Well, we won't know for sure until it's tested."

"What if I break it?"

Hank shrugged. "No one can use this but you."

He hadn't seen a way to make it work as glasses. Once Hank abandoned that idea, though, his mind opened to new possibilities. A single lens simplified the equation immensely, removing the problem of parallel modification.

Because, of course, Scott's ability required adjustable moderation. Previously, Hank helped design external power enhancements—wings for Sean, concentrated energy for Alex. They learned to control their own abilities, whereas now Hank was attempting to create a means through with Scott could achieve similar degrees of control.

Any control at all would be nice.

Scott chewed his lip nervously. "What if it doesn't work and I, like, blow up the house?"

"You've been using your ability unchecked for months now," Hank reasoned. At the moment, Scott's ability had only two extremes: either it remained wholly controlled behind his glasses, or he attempted self-control and blasted until—in his words—his eyeballs felt gooey.

Scott hesitated. He sighed, then declared, "I'm never going outside in this thing."

There was no arguing that point.

Hank held onto Scott's glasses while Scott adjusted the… "What do you call it?"

Hank thought for a moment. "I dunno. A visor?"

"That's kind of lame."

"Yeah, I know."

It didn't seem particularly important and neither of them pressed the matter—especially not when, a few moments later, it allowed Scott to use only a very limited amount of his ability. He laughed in something like disbelief.

Hank grinned. His creation had worked! He had managed to—

The following few seconds seemed composed mostly of sounds. There was the _kra-boom_ of the visor breaking and Scott's full power blasting forth, then the thud of a body hitting the ground and the sickening _crack_ of skull-floor collision.

"Scott? ... _Scott?_ "

Scott coughed and blood stained his mouth.

A moment of panic seized Hank. He panicked in his own quiet way, freezing in place. Before he could recover Scott sat up, coughing more blood.

"'m okay," he said thickly. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, smearing rather than lessening the stain. "Bit my tongue."

As best Hank could surmise, Scott had simply lowered his defenses. Possibly the visor's failed containment had been a factor—but Scott insisted he was fine, just a bump on the head was all, don't worry about it.

Hank pressed Scott's glasses into his hand, feeling more than a twinge of guilt over the whole situation. What had gone wrong? It should have worked. Scott's power should have modified just as light would. It had, too, for a few seconds.

"Hank?"

"Yeah."

Blood dripped from Scott's mouth, staining his jeans, his skin where it slipped through the torn knee.

"I don't wanna do this anymore."

Anymore. Not 'again'. For Scott, this experiment had been one in a series, just another piece of the far-too-old 'what can be done with Scott's ability' sequence.

"I'll talk to Charles. I'm sorry about this."

Scott shrugged. "Science, right?"

But he took the reprieve.

Gladly. 


	2. Sunday Morning

Not even nine o'clock in the morning and already the sun poured in like it had melted the windowpanes, leave square puddles of bright heat on the floor. Light caught every mote of dust. It made the still air seem that much heavier.

An open window might have helped, but it would have interrupted the quiet. Even the grating sound of a slow breath seemed too loud.

Scott Summers, fifteen years old (near as he could reckon) and a mutant (whatever that meant), sat at the piano and wished all the tiny noises would stop. Couldn't they give him five minutes alone? He needed to concentrate! There were so many distractions.

An occasional rustle of wind.

The bench creaking slightly as he sat up straight.

His heartbeat.

He forced another slow breath. Then, carefully, he began to play. He no longer remembered how to read musical notation or which key corresponded to which letter. He knew the timing was off as he played through the notes, thinking them only as he knew how: pinkie, thumb, index, ring, middle, thumb…

He only knew the first nine notes. The ninth felt wrong, like the edge of something. The whole song felt off and Scott knew it was, the notes stilted, like speech without inflection. And even those were tough to recall when he thought about it.

A shot in the dark: pinkie for ten.

Scott shook his head. This shouldn't be so hard! He knew the song, could hear it in his head when his thoughts went quiet… but apparently he only knew it well enough to know when he hit the wrong notes. He sighed and pressed his head against his hand, not sure if he was angry or frustrated or just plain tired.

Well, he _knew_ he was tired.

He once more shook his head. It did not dispel his thoughts or make any of the tiredness slip away, just brought more hair down to obscure his face. Why he kept his hair so long, even Scott didn't know. He supposed he didn't see the point in cutting it.

After another halting attempt, Scott took a pen and scribbled the numbers on the back of his fingers. Then he returned his attention to the piano and started again: pinkie 1, thumb 2, index 3, ring 4, middle 5—

_Take care of your brother, Scott._

He hit a sour note. It all jumbled together in his mind: the words, the song, the fear whose cause he no longer recalled. Even that broken promise was not the worst.

How could it possibly not be the worst? Scott knew what he had promised. He said he would take care of his brother. Now his brother was gone. His brother was gone, and Scott no longer remembered his name. Ethan, maybe?

Yet even worse was that pause. Like the song, the memory ended too soon. He wished it would go away wholly, not haunt him in his nightmares, that moment of silence so heavy with the knowledge of what came next.

It was knowledge Scott did not have.

That was the worst part. Out of everything, nothing hurt more than waiting for those words, for the last thing his father—

Scott rushed through the notes, music drowning his thoughts for a few seconds. It still sounded wrong, this time the notes too fast and too close together rather than the monotony they had been before. This time it sounded more like noise than music.

A burst of anger shot through him. Scott whirled away from the piano. It wasn't uncommon, that anger. He whirled away and buried his face in his hands. That wasn't uncommon, either. Nothing made this place feel less like home than remembering that he could quite easily break anything, and none of it was his to break.

At the orphanage, someone would have shouted for him. That had been an adjustment, and the sudden voice in his head at a particularly inopportune moment made him think something obscene—and, a moment later, that he really hoped the Professor hadn't heard that.

It didn't matter. Barring those fractions of a second spent on cussing, Scott responded immediately. He bolted down the hallway and skidded into the kitchen.

"I'm sorry." He didn't pause to speak, just grabbed a tin of cat food and a plastic dish. Artie was whining. "I remember."

This was directed at the Professor, a term of address on which they had compromised because the older man didn't like being called Mr. Xavier and _really_ didn't like being called 'sir', and Scott couldn't call him Charles.

"I know you do."

That had been the condition of keeping Artie: she was Scott's responsibility. He would be the one who fed her, cleaned up after her, and kept her out of the house as much as possible. Scott met those expectations. Mostly, anyway.

He set Artie's food under the sink. She gave a mewl that he generally interpreted as _you finally did something right, human._ While Artie lit into her breakfast, Scott washed his hands and did likewise—substituting peanut butter for cat food.

The kettle whistled. The Professor poured himself a cup of tea and stirred it, the spoon clacking against the mug. "You're still having the nightmares," he remarked mildly.

Scott glanced over, then focused back on his sandwich. Sandwiches were much simpler. They didn't ask questions, they just got eaten. "I'm too old for that stuff." Whether 'that stuff' meant having nightmares or talking about them, Scott didn't specify.

"You're only fifteen."

"I'm nearly sixteen. Actually, when will we say I'm sixteen? Since I don't have a birthday."

"I suppose you can pick one and we'll say you're sixteen then. And you are changing the subject."

"It doesn't matter," he murmured. "I don't wanna talk about it." What would talking accomplish? The whole point in being awake was _not_ having nightmares.

Artie finished her breakfast and whimpered at Scott, winding figure eights around his feet. He picked her up with one arm. He scrunched his fingers in her fur, half petting her, and she responded with a half purr that told him he really could do better. She also responded by digging in her claws and kneading his chest.

"Fuck a flying duck!"

"I'm sure I misheard that…."

"Yeah—I'm sorry—she…" Scott trailed off. Artie's claw had done enough in a sensitive area to justify cussing, in his opinion, but saying 'fuck' was bad enough. 'Nipple' wasn't going to help. "Won't happen again."

Cats were like that, though. They knew well their own superiority, but they were so generous with those below them it was difficult to resent the occasional lapse in courtesy. According to Hank and the Professor, Artie was a light gray cat with green eyes. She was red to Scott, just like the rest of the world, but he didn't care what she looked like.

He didn't _care_. He still wondered. It made him think about the extent of the others' abilities, sometimes. His eyes destroyed buildings. Hank was strong, but did he know the limit, did he have one?

"Could someone make you stop reading their mind?" he wondered.

"Another telepath could."

"But not somebody like me?"

"You couldn't force me out of your mind, but if you asked me not to read your thoughts, I wouldn't."

Scott shook his head. He knew that usually the Professor _wasn't_ reading his thoughts, so it did not bother him.

"I was just wondering." After a moment, he asked, "What about someone really far away?"

"Farther with Cerebro, though Hank might be better able to answer you about that. You've got a lot of questions today."

There was an implicit question there, as well, a request for an explanation. Scott shrugged. "I'll ask Hank," he said, rather than admit he could not remember green. "Do you ever…"

"Do I ever what?"

Scott looked at Artie. It had taken a long time for him to manage a conversation with the Professor. After a while, rather than pretending Scott had not said anything, Professor Xavier started doing that, asking what he wanted to say. By now Scott knew better than to say 'nothing', although 'I don't want to talk about it' was usually okay.

Instead, he asked softly, "Do you ever read Moira's thoughts?"

Silence answered. Last year, the government began threatening Moira to reveal the mutants' location. To protect both Moira and Scott, the Professor erased her memories. He had tried to hide how much this bothered him.

"Sometimes."

"Is she okay?"

"She's fine."

Scott nodded. He wanted to believe that. He had been afraid of Moira and believed she would send him to prison or the Foundlings' Home back in Omaha, but still felt badly about what had happened. That was one of three reasons he cared about her. He also cared about her as a friend of a friend, and because she had been the one to recognize that he was a mutant and call the Professor—and, in doing so, she had probably saved his life.

Neither of them really liked talking about Moira. Occasionally, though, it seemed they had no choice: she had forgotten them, but they had not forgotten her.


	3. Blue Apes and Dancing Chipmunks

August in New York was miserably hot and humid. It was bad during the day. Nights were torment.

Scott hated the heat. He hated the endlessness of trying to find a vaguely comfortable way to sleep and had given up on the bed weeks ago. Instead he stretched out on the much cooler floor. He imagined he was a sidewalk chalk outline of himself, carefully sketched so that none of his limbs touched. The heat from his body was just too much on top of the weather.

Scott was, finally, half-asleep when the rain started. It wasn't a real rain, just humidity pelting down in heavy drops, but it was close enough. He groaned in objection. Blindly, he turned on the light and grabbed his glasses, then went to open the window.

It didn't happen immediately. Scott sat on the floor with a book, trying to make his tired mind focus on the words. He was still trying and making little progress when something landed on the windowsill. A moment later, Artie jumped to the ground.

Scott closed the window and dried her off with a t-shirt.

"Knew you'd show up."

She didn't always, and he liked to think they had a mutually understood agreement that if she was not here by the time he got really sleepy, he would close the window. Rainy nights were different.

Artie acknowledged him by giving a complaining sort of meow.

"I know the feeling," Scott assured her. He picked up the cat and went to turn off the light once more.

Imagining the sidewalk chalk outline of himself, he settled back onto the floor. Artie poked around for a few minutes, then curled up and fell asleep on his chest.

He didn't know how long he slept, only that he woke to a quick burst of pain. He had just found his glasses when Artie bit his nose again.

"'m awake," he murmured, going to let her out the window.

Artie did not always complain. Sometimes she simply showed up for company. Really, though, waking him up was for everyone's benefit: Artie was let outside, and Scott did not have to spend the morning washing cat urine off his sheets.

It was earlier than Scott would have liked, but he did not bother trying to get back to sleep. The sun was getting up, he might as well.

He dressed and made the bed like he had slept in it, then wandered to the lab.

Hank kept inconsistent hours at best. He was _usually_ awake during the day, but if he was deeply involved in his research, he seemed to only need a few hours' sleep. There was always a chance of finding him here.

Scott knocked.

"Yeah—come in!"

Over the past few months, the lab had become progressively more scientific. Things Hank cobbled together looked like professional equipment; he could probably make a generator out of two paperclips and a rubber band if he had to. Scott found the place a little intimidating. He had no good memories of labs, and for a moment he looked around, nervous.

Seemingly unaware of this, Hank explained, "I never get tired of blood samples."

He only momentarily raised his eyes from his microscope, but the enthusiasm in his voice made for quite the welcome. Even though Scott rarely understood what Hank was doing, he thought it fascinating and wonderful, mostly because of the tone in which Hank explained it.

It was Hank who dispelled Scott's discomfort in the lab. This place might look sterile like the labs back in Omaha, but there was nothing back in Omaha like a six-foot, furry man with ill-fitting glasses. There was probably nothing and no one anywhere else in the world like Hank.

"What are you doing?"

Scott hovered nearby, not touching anything. He wasn't particularly interested in the microscope. He had seen cell samples before, but always felt disconnected from them. Okay, so everything is made up of cells, and he knew that—because he had been told it enough times—but when Scott looked at those tiny blobs of motion, he felt no connection to them.

Besides, Hank said that any cells not splitting were dead, which meant just about everything around him was dead.

"What I'd really like," Hank said, "is a sample of human blood."

Scott swallowed the urge to laugh. _Okay then, Dracula_ …

"I'd love to look at a side-by-side comparison," Hank continued, ever enthusiastic about research. "I've seen samples before, and I've seen images in textbooks, but I'd really love to see if there is any significant difference between human and mutant cells. I mean, there shouldn't be, in theory, but I've heard of mutants who heal rapidly—I'd love to see those cells."

He looked away from the microscope and his voice changed, directly addressing Scott rather than speaking and knowing he would hear.

"Just about everything you need to know about a person is in a few drops of blood, if you can look closely enough."

"Aw, c'mon, Hank! You can't know _everything_ from a few drops of blood."

Hank resettled his glasses. "Not everything," he agreed, "but enough."

"It can't be possible."

Hank smiled. "You shoot laser beams out of your eyes, I'm a blue ape, and Charles could make you spend the rest of your life believing you were a dancing chipmunk."

He had a point: the Professor said all mutants were welcome here, but as a concept, 'impossible' was perfectly average. It had no place in this house.

"A chipmunk?"

"You know," Hank replied, like this was what had Scott confused, "those little things that go 'neep'."

Scott laughed. "Right. Neep. Anyway—I won't keep you from it."

He admired, even envied Hank's enthusiasm for his work. Although Hank never seemed to mind the distraction, Scott kept these conversations brief.

He had only taken a few steps when Hank stopped him. "Scott?"

"Yeah?"

"You were calling out last night."

The news brought a prickly, awkward sensation. That was two nights in a row. Scott knew he was quiet through the nightmares about his father, so at least no one knew about that one, but it was still embarrassing. Bad enough that he had nightmares at fifteen, did he have to go announcing it?

Hank shifted awkwardly. "I just… thought you should know."

Scott nodded. "Thanks."

He understood that Hank would say little about it, although they both knew the Professor might. The last thing Scott wanted was to discuss what had happened back at the orphanage, but he knew ignoring problems was not in the Professor's nature. Unless the dreams stopped, sooner or later, they were going to have a talk about it.

Yet for some reason, Scott found himself telling Hank, "I wish I had a reason."

"Well," Hank began, sounded uncertain, "I don't know what happened to you, but…"

 _But._ He didn't know, but he had seen some of the scars. He knew it was something bad enough to give a fifteen-year-old nightmares.

He cleared his throat.

"It seems like a pretty reasonable thing, to have nightmares."

Scott shook his head. "Not that. I wish I had a reason it had happened."

Hank looked away. He was a reasonable sort of man, usually, very rational. Asking a question he couldn't answer seemed mean, but Scott couldn't help it. The thought kept bouncing through his head.

After a moment, Hank offered, "It sounded pretty bad last night."

"Shit." Scott said this matter-of-factly. He tried not to swear around adults but Hank, despite the age difference, seemed more like a peer. He bit his thumbnail, then caught himself and stopped. "D'you think… would you tell him that I went to the library early?" he asked.

It was not unusual. Scott had become very much a regular library patron.

"Are you going to the library early?"

Scott nodded. He was not _exactly_ asking Hank to lie for him, since he would be going to the library. No one needed to know he would be hanging around outside for an hour before the library opened.

Maybe if he could postpone this conversation for a while, the whole issue would just go away.


	4. Rules Are Not Made to be Broken

Scott loved the library better than nearly anyplace else. It was peaceful and full of books, and mostly quiet but for the steady whir of the fan fighting a losing battle against the summer heat—yet the building was shady enough to feel cool.

And it was something Scott could only think of as dirty, and that was a compliment. For all its tidiness, the library invited life into it. The windows let the weather in, dust motes spun laziness on the air and settled in less used sections. The library was a place of warmth and light, the perfect opposite of a sterile lab.

He knew the dustier sections of the library quite well, like the place he currently stood, with books on classical Latin grammar and Greek etymology. Scott stood with one book in his hands and a small collection of books at his feet. As he read, two things made his pulse race. First, he knew he was pressed for time.

Second, something terrible was going to happen.

He knew that.

He had been fighting that knowledge for two weeks, both times he hid at the back of the library and read pieces from books he was not allowed to check out.

He supposed he should have realized it right from the start, but told himself not to. He told himself to be less fearful. Maybe the idyllic, atmospheric opening sequence was a promise of a whole book just like that. Only there had been those dead mice, and then the puppy, and now—

Scott came to the end of a page and glanced at the clock, but barely registered the time, checking the time to appease his need to check it. He _couldn't_ leave yet, because he was afraid of what might happen next in the story. A week of anticipation was beyond unfair.

But he had to.

Scott was beyond late. He swore, stashed his book between two ancient-looking volumes on Latin, and penned the page number onto his palm. Then he promptly tripped over the novels at his feet.

He swore again as he gathered them up.

"Hello, Scott."

There was something else he loved about the library: Mae. The librarian had to be at least sixty, but she was hardly the stuffy cliché one might expect. She always had a smile on her face and had recognized Scott as a kindred spirit straight away, or so she said. He had it written all over him, that just like her he couldn't keep from smiling in the presence of books—on the inside, anyway.

"Hi, Mae."

She wouldn't tell him her last name.

"Now, remind me what it is you're reading," she said, rolling the adjustable rubber stamp to the proper date.

" _Of Mice and Men._ "

"Oh! I take it you've not read the ending yet."

"Nah. Curley's wife just died."

Mae paused. She had the now-adjusted stamp in one hand and the ink pad half-opened in the other. For a long moment, she just looked at him. Then she sighed and her shoulders drooped. "My dear boy, you cannot leave a story like that."

"I know." He did, too. The anticipation already had him in knots. "But I have to go home, I'm late already."

Mae began stamping the cards in the books Scott meant to check out. "If you want to take it with you…"

"You know I can't."

"I'll look the other way while you slip it into your bag."

The offer was tempting. Scott hesitated for a few seconds, all but drooling. He wanted that book so badly! He had to shake his head, though. Rules were not made to be broken. "Thank you, but I'm not supposed to."

He half expected to see disappointment in Mae's face, and for a moment he did think it flickered there—because he had refused the offer? Because he had not valued the book highly enough?—but then she smiled.

"You're a good boy."

He couldn't hear those words enough.

Because of his age, Scott had a child's library card. While he could browse whichever books he liked, he could only borrow from the children's section. He didn't mind, though, not too much. Once he stopped being embarrassed by the name, he started to appreciate that these books had something to offer, too.

So he slipped the four books he had chosen into his backpack, said goodbye to Mae, and stepped out into the sunlight. It blinded him at first. The heat was like walking into a brick wall. Between those combined, Scott managed to find his bike when he misjudged the distance and smashed his knee into the flagpole.

"Nice junker. You do realize the Clean Air Act hasn't passed, right?"

Scott blinked, trying to clear his eyes as he turned towards the sound.

"Shut up, Russ."

"I'm just saying—"

"You're always 'just saying'."

The speakers were a couple of kids about his age. Scott gripped his bicycle's handlebars, feeling suddenly defensive. The bike was one of the few things he really considered _his_ , and even that quite tentatively. The Professor had told him as much, pointing out that he couldn't exactly use it, and if Scott wanted to fix up the bicycle he could have it.

What that had to do with an act in Congress, Scott couldn't say, but he knew when he was being insulted. He looked at the kids. They seemed much older than he felt at the moment. Anyway, none of that mattered. They were blocking his path and he really just wanted them to move so he could leave.

"Aw, c'mon." This was from the boy Scott guessed to be Russ, addressed to a remarkably pretty girl. She had softness all over her, in her eyes and her hips and even in the way she chided her friend. "I'm just havin' some fun with the hippie. You're all about fun, aren't you?"

Scott understood that by 'you', Russ meant hippies. He had no idea.

His throat had gone suddenly dry. He managed, "I'm not a hippie." _And I don't have time for this._

Russ opened his mouth, but the girl tweaked his ear before he could speak. "Don't," she told him, "it's not cool."

Scott glanced at his bicycle. It was easier than looking at the girl, especially given the way she had moved earlier, or the way her chest curved and her incredibly short cut-offs that made him feel a way he really didn't want to feel right now.

"Hey, what's your name?"

_Bicycles. Baseball._

"Um." He had been asked a question. It should have been an easy one. "Scott."

"Okay, Scott, well, I'm sorry about my friend hassling you."

He shrugged. "Doesn't matter." He was still staring at his bike. Did they have to do this? He needed to _leave_. He needed to have left!

Resignation laced her voice as the girl said, "It was nice meeting you."

They turned to go, and Russ called over his shoulder, "Get a haircut, hippie!"

Scott scowled. _I could shut you up with a look, asshole._

He could, too, but he knew the Professor would be _really_ disappointed in him. Scott tried not to have violent thoughts around him. It was something he tried to keep secret, the part of him that sometimes wanted to do things, to use this power to keep himself safe.

Instead he hopped on his bicycle and left town in the dust.


	5. Human (or Whatever)

Forty-five minutes after Scott left the house, and completely unrelated, a bus pulled into the depot. With a heavy, exasperated sort of shudder, it stopped, and the doors sighed open. It was amazing how a Greyhound bus acted and sounded remarkably like someone dying of an asthma attack.

Alex Summers sniffed his t-shirt as he stepped off the bus. It smelled more of an unwashed man who had spent over twenty-four hours on a bus than of the sickly disinfectant they used, which was a mercy. His own stink didn't bother him. That cloying chemical compound, however…

Alex worked his jaw and spat, trying to get rid of it. Too many hours breathing that stuff and his throat felt lined with disinfectant.

Public bathrooms were grimier than prison bathrooms, but all Alex really needed was running water. He tried the first tap. Apparently 'running water' was too much to ask! Luckily the second tap worked. Alex shrugged out of his jacket and t-shirt and rinsed off the bus’s essence. When he felt something like human (or whatever) again, he pulled on a vaguely clean shirt and shoved the dirty one in his bag.

He tossed a soda bottle into the garbage on his way to the payphone. A nickel rattled through the phone, clanking down into its hold. Alex dialed.

The operator responded: _"Please insert another five cents."_

Alex cussed at her as he dug through his pockets, finally finding another nickel in his jacket. It clinked into the machine and his call went through.

After two rings, someone answered, "Hello?"

"It's me."

"Alex!"

He smiled. Sisters were great. No matter how many times you stole their dolls, drank milk from the carton, or got arrested, they were still happy to hear your voice.

"Did you get there okay?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

Across the street, a homeless man dug through a trash can.

"How was the bus?"

Alex laughed. "Boring."

His attention was still on the homeless man, his mind urging him to move on to another bin.

"Listen, Alex—I totally trust you, and I'm not implying anything, but… have you thought about what you're gonna do? You were really vague."

_Aw, damn…_

The homeless man had found the bottle. Alex bit his lip. In a terrible way, it was kind of funny, although he really hoped the man didn't actually drink that.

"I have some friends here. I'm going to see if I can't crash with them for a while."

"Friends?"

"Not those kinds of friends."

No, they were hardly likely to land him in prison again. The thought was almost funny—Hank and Charles, up to no good!

The homeless man twisted open the bottle, and the look on his face was hilarious. Alex turned away to hide that he was shaking with laughter.

"Alex?"

"Sorry, Haley. I wasn't laughing at you."

It had been a long bus ride. Alex had no idea how girls managed those sorts of trips, but he had been peeing in a 7-Up bottle.

The phone beeped a warning.

"I gotta go. Take care."

"You too. Call me if you run into trouble."

There was a sort of dutiful tone. Alex knew he had never been the best at staying out of trouble and had never liked asking for help when he needed it, but Haley offered, anyway.

_"Please insert another five cents."_

Alex did not have another five cents.

"Love you," he said quickly, and hung up. He glanced around, glad the homeless man had moved on—there had been no one around to hear him sound like a dweeb.

Then he slipped a straw from his pocket. He was once more glad there was no one around, this time because they did not see him jamming the coin slot and tricking the payphone into spitting out its change. He was not completely broke, but he did not have many nickels on him or much respect for the telephone company.

The change was more than enough to buy him a conversation.

Alex stopped at the first convenience store he found. While he counted out the coins for a soda and candy bar, he asked, "You think you could help me out with directions? I just got back to town…"

The cashier looked like he wanted nothing more than to return to the book pinned open by the register, but he nodded. "Where're you trying to get to?"

"Uh…" Shit. What was that street? "It's outside the city, it's like, this really big house."

"The haunted house?"

"Haunted," Alex repeated, skeptical.

"Out on Graymalkin, weird giant place."

"Yeah, sounds like it." Either that, or there were two insanely giant houses in the area. It was the sort of thing he could ask Sean, who had the advantage of a bird's-eye view.

Alex slid a pile of change across the counter. He had guessed he had a considerable walk ahead of him, though after more than a day on a Greyhound bus, he appreciated that. At first, he focused on the directions, but once he left the town behind it was just Alex and his thoughts as he marched down the road.

Over the past months, he had taken a handful of temporary jobs, earned enough to do what he wanted—live independently, not starve to death, drink, party. A few times he left town in a hurry, though he had better control of his ability now.

It had taken him a while to realize what he was really doing. He knew he was living a primarily superficial existence, but it took him months to accept he was doing it because of Darwin. He was doing it because he enjoyed it, but also because he had been responsible for his friend's death.

And he had stood there and watched while someone died.

And he needed to not think about that.

By the time the sun burned off the relative chill of the morning, Alex could no longer see the town behind him. He could not see the house, either, just a lot of trees lining the road. What was he going to say, if they asked what he had been up to?

Probably something sexual, a remark which would serve two purposes. First, it would put a stop to the questions. Second, it would be hilarious. Alex loved filthy jokes. Maybe Sean was back, too—he had a great sense of humor. Charles didn't, though. Sexual comments were the ultimate change of subject with him.

He needed a better answer as to why he had returned. He didn't have one, for them or for himself.

By the time he reached Charles's place, Alex was beginning to wonder if he had taken a wrong turn. His efforts at the bus depot were completely undone; he was back to smelling like a guy who desperately needed a shower, thanks to the humidity. (Also thanks to the several days that had passed since he last showered.)

Alex knocked at the door. When no one answered, he tried the doorknob. It turned easily.

"Hello?"

He had no idea what had happened in his absence. He had seen a soccer ball on the lawn, so at least Hank was still here. Maybe they had a whole new team. Maybe Hank had worked up another 'cure'—for mutation, for paraplegia. Maybe Charles had told Moira how he felt about her—okay, so that one was a little unrealistic.

Alex looked around as he walked into the house. Nothing seemed different. The place was so quiet his footsteps practically echoed.

"Charles? Hank? Anybody here?"

Alex did not feel like an intruder. After all, he knew where the spare key was hidden. He simply did not know what to do. Settling in without speaking to anyone seemed odd. Besides, wasn't that the point in coming home?

He set down his bag. He had only lived here for a few weeks, but that was time enough to pick up on people's habits. In Alex's experience, few people varied their routines. He heard voices on his first guess.

That confirmed, too, that Hank was still here.

He had no idea what he would call this room. In a game of _Clue_ , it was probably the study. Before the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was a room most of them avoided because Erik and Charles were probably holed up in there playing chess and drinking like old men.

Alex knocked on the door and found himself smiling as he realized what he had thought— _coming home._

It was nice to be back in Mutantville.


	6. The Sound of Feet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem in this chapter is Robert Frost's "Acquainted with the Night". (On a personal note, it's a sorrowfully lovely poem and well worth reading.)

Scott dropped strips of notebook paper in the sink. They soaked through in a matter of seconds, by which time he had fished them out again and pressed them against the windowpane. There they stuck, lines of someone else's words in his own chicken scratch writing.

Then he grabbed the sponge and set to washing the dishes.

Alex's arrival had him all in knots. Alex seemed all right, and Hank and the Professor were obviously happy to see him. No, Scott did not exactly _dislike_ Alex. He had no strong feelings about the man. But for months, ever since the Professor erased Moira's memories, it had just been the three of them.

Scott liked the way things were. Alex changed things; he was here and everything was different. Scott told himself that Alex had only just arrived and everything would settle into some sort of normal, but it would be a _different_ normal.

"The Team" had been mentioned before. Neither Hank nor the Professor liked talking about the details, although Hank liked talking about the technology and the Professor about the ideas, so Scott knew the abstractions. He knew a little about the other people involved, too, but this was the first time he had ever met one of them.

Thinking about it made his stomach twist. They talked about the team like it was tied to memories they preferred not to have but couldn't get rid of, yet they were both so obviously happy to see Alex. What if they decided to rebuild the team after all? The Professor had been quite clear that one of the differences was age and he would not allow (much as he could prevent it) Scott to be in such a situation. What if they decided they didn't need him anymore? What if…

It was too horrible a thought to actually think. Instead it overwhelmed his mind like a mood or a color. To shift his focus, Scott looked at the papers stuck to the window, choosing at random—

 _I have looked down the saddest city lane._   
_I have passed by the watchman on his beat_   
_And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain._

The words made him feel calmer. They needed to be read slowly, each to be felt in its own time. It was the only way he could read them at all. Somehow, rushing through the poem felt like using the wrong hand to write.

Something brushed against his leg. He barely would have noticed, but for the soft mewl that followed.

"Artie!"

Scott thought something obscene as he dried his hands and took off after her.

When he first brought her home, the Professor agreed she could stay, so long as she lived outdoors and was completely Scott's responsibility. He had not technically broken those rules. They had been adjusted, however, and Artie was now allowed in the kitchen and Scott's bedroom.

She was _not_ allowed to wander off wherever she liked, a restriction to which she seemed to take personal offense.

Now he followed her as quickly as he could without seeming suspicious. He needed to catch her and get her outside. Artie knew this, and Scott was just quick enough to see her puffy tail disappear through a doorway. _Good._ He could catch her in a room with only one exit.

As soon as he stepped into the room, Scott realized his mistake. Yesterday this had been an unused room. Now the bed was made (if you could call it that!) and a bag lay on the floor. A halfhearted attempt had been made at emptying it.

Yesterday this was an empty room. Now, apparently, it was Alex's.

Neither of them was allowed in here!

"Artie!" Scott called softly.

Though he mostly searched low, scanning any nook under a piece of furniture, he could not help noticing something Alex had out. On the dresser was a bedraggled teddy bear, loved almost to baldness in places. It wasn't the sort of thing he expected a guy like Alex to have. Although they had only known one another for a few hours, Scott already had a fairly clear impression of Alex: suave, unflappable, the kind of person whose confidence was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Something about the bear drew him. Maybe it was how un-Alex-like it seemed, soft and juvenile from someone so cool. One of its eyes had been chewed off and replaced with a close-enough-to-matching button.

There was something familiar about that bear, his half-wild fur, mismatched eyes, and the loopy 5 drawn on either foot. (Highway 55? May 5th?) Scott could remember wishing for something like this, and when he pictured his wish, the bear looked just like this one.

Claws skittered against the floor as Artie darted out from beneath the bed and made a break for the door. "Hey!" Scott shot forward, smashed his shoulder into the dresser, and scooped up the cat. She struggled, but even with his shoulder aching she was no match for him.

With Artie recaptured, he picked up the photograph that had fallen when he slammed the dresser and caught a glimpse of the image, a young couple with a toddler. He heard that voice again, the one from his dream—

"What're you doing in here?"

Scott looked up at Alex with a sudden nervousness. Somehow there was no doubt in his mind that Alex could beat him up and that, since he had come into Alex's room, he kind of had it coming. He took a step back. "I was just—"

Alex grabbed the picture. "Don't go through my stuff."

Scott nodded. "I won't," he agreed, his voice higher than usual. "I swear." His eyes darted to the door, but Alex was blocking it.

The thought that Alex might have no intention of hurting him did not occur to Scott. Alex himself was barely a factor; a well-learned instinct told Scott to be frightened now. He was on someone else's territory. Besides, nothing had ever stopped anybody pushing him around before.

Alex raised his hand and Scott flinched, tightening his grip on Artie.

Obviously the motion had not been lost on Alex. He made a point of setting down the picture, which Scott now realized was all he had intended to do.

"It's personal, okay? The picture. It's me and my parents." Then he stepped aside.

Scott did not wait for Alex to change his mind. He just deposited Artie outside and went to finish washing the dishes. Two of his strips of paper had fallen, but one remained still stuck to the window:

_I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet._

But he would not have heard the sound of feet, in fact barely heard the water over the rushing in his head.


	7. School is not for Everyone

Charles looked at the chessboard in front of him and debated attempting a solo game. It wouldn't be the same, of course, if such a thing could even work at all, but he found himself aching for a decent opponent.

He had tried teaching Scott, but Scott didn't have the patience to sit still for so long a time. At least not without a book in his hands. It was too bad, really: a nice game of chess might have been the perfect opportunity to mention how often he shouted in his sleep.

Hank could play, but for Hank, chess seemed to be a stimulant. Charles played chess and let the game quiet his mind. It seemed Hank's subconscious never went quiet. At any point during a match, he might have a sudden scientific revelation. He was too considerate to forfeit—usually—but his mind was elsewhere.

Having Hank around kept Charles's ego from inflating. For all he had worked and learned and studied, he would never have Hank's natural ability.

A knock at the door shook him out of his thoughts. Before he has the chance to ask who was there, his visitor answered that question by coming in without waiting for a response. The others wouldn't. Hank, if he burst in, would do so with a rushed apology melding into an even more rushed explanation; and Scott was too compulsively polite.

Alex settled opposite Charles. They could have played chess, but Alex was really more a pinball kind of guy.

"What's the story on your puppy?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"The kid."

Charles sighed. As glad as he was to see Alex, some things about him were difficult to miss.

"I've asked you not to refer to people that way."

He had felt like a primary school teacher, but what choice did he have? Alex had a knack for identifying someone's weakest spot and poking it with a stick.

Alex objected, "You must have noticed the way he looks to you."

"Yes, of course I have," Charles admitted.

That was basically a staple of education with Scott. Charles preferred to think of Scott as the first of many students, still planning to open a mutant academy. He was making progress, too, though what he had right now was one homeschooled fifteen-year-old with the mathematical ability of a goldfish.

Scott was about as good at algebra as he was at chess, but it was hard to be frustrated with him. He always tried and he was deeply apologetic—in fact most of his efforts seemed to be not towards furthering his own education, but making Charles happy. (This, ironically, was incredibly saddening.)

So, yes, Scott looked to Charles as a puppy looks to its master. Alex didn't need to say it, though. Not like that.

"Have you given any thought to what you mean to do?" he asked.

Alex cleared his throat. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I was kinda hoping I could… uh… the thing is, I still lose control of it sometimes. Of my ability."

"You're always welcome here and I'm still happy to help you however I can."

Previously, Charles had thought Alex made quite a lot of progress. Had he stopped practicing when he left?

Charles had come to appreciate, over the past months, that many powers were far more complicated to use than his own, especially for someone like Scott or Alex. Their powers were destructive. While a mistake for Charles meant knowing something that might be awkward for him to know, Alex or Scott would accidentally find themselves standing in a pile of rubble.

"I'm not sure what I'd do in a school," Alex admitted.

Neither was Charles. It was easier with himself and Hank, and there were other adult mutants. Alex…

"Teach gym."

They both laughed.

There was a place here for Alex. Charles did not yet know what it was, but he was determined that it existed. It had to: where else was Alex going to do if he still lost control?

"What do you like to do, Alex?" He realized he did not know. They had worked together only briefly and unlike the others, Alex's life had not been interrupted by the experiment.

Alex shrugged. "I was never much good at school. Nothing seemed important, relevant."

It sounded, to Charles, likes Alex had never been _interested_ in school. There was a big difference between being no good at math and being taught math poorly—but it wasn't the time for that argument.

Instead, he asked, "What do you like to do outside of school?" He saw the answer before Alex gave it and objected, "Oh, come on, you must have something. What have you been doing for the past year?"

"Well…"

Alex cleared his throat. There was something, but Charles neither pressed the issue nor used his telepathy. He had learned to rely less on that, over the past few months. Communicating via thoughts was often the easier option—'option' being the most important word. If he read Scott's mind even half so often as he considered it, Scott would probably barely speak for the rest of his life.

The same could not be said of Alex, yet Charles found himself using the same tactic. He was not their peer. That changed how he behaved towards them, how much he considered 'helping'.

"We'll find something," he promised, and he believed it, though Alex clearly did not.


	8. Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book mentioned in this chapter, The Wonderful O, is a children's book published in the 1950s. Charles and Hank have it confused with a very different book with a similar title.

"This is different," Alex observed. He did not mean 'good' or 'bad' in saying so—only what he said. Different. When it had been the whole team, they tended to break into groups. They did not all sit down to dinner together like… he could think of no better comparison: a family.

"It's his fault," Hank replied, indicating Scott. "Charles decided we needed house rules a few months back."

Scott gave him a brief look of dissent, then ducked his head. Alex was not terribly surprised. Three times today, he and Scott had been in the same room. None of those instances involved Scott speaking. Alex was about ready to update his analysis from 'puppy' to 'turtle'.

Charles retorted, "I decided that before Scott's arrival. He was catalytic, not causal."

"You guys are dorks."

"Yes, we are," Charles acknowledged. "Would you pass the… um…"

Hank passed the box. "It's called _gan chao niu he_."

"You speak Chinese?" Alex had not known that about Hank.

"Only the stuff off the menu. Unfortunately the only one of us who can cook at all is Scott. And that's mostly pancakes."

At the sound of his name, Scott raised his head sharply. "What?" He blinked, disoriented.

Hank explained, "I was just saying that Charles and I can't even make oatmeal."

"Oatmeal's hard," Scott agreed, missing the point.

"What you make isn't oatmeal," Charles responded, "it's liquid cookies."

"It has fruit."

"Liquid oatmeal-raisin cookies."

Whether Charles had won the argument or simply reached a point at which Scott was no longer willing to argue, no one could say. They lapsed back into silence. It might have been called companionable by the others. Hank and Scott were quiet, and Charles was happy enough with his own thoughts.

Alex didn't like silences at dinner. When he was a kid, that meant his parents were having another argument and even the slightest wrong word would send his mother away in tears. Silence meant kids too afraid to talk.

He was no longer a kid, but the silence still made Alex uncomfortable.

"Are you still looking for your cure?" he wondered out loud. Catching Charles's expression, he added, "Hey, just a question. I still think you look badass."

Hank did not seem to mind, though. "I don't feel that would be worthwhile."

"Cool."

"Did you make it out to California?"

"Yeah. It was awesome." Alex had done a few things in California he was not going to mention in front of Charles or Scott. (Or at least, Charles and Scott. You could imply filth with a 15-year-old, right?) Many of his experiences there were cliché. They did, in fact, play volleyball topless at the beach, and Venice teemed with seagulls, rastas, and teenagers on roller skates.

He'd had a henna tattoo on his shoulder. The friends he made there, they warned him it would itch like anything. Mostly the dried henna flaked off in the sand—those California girls were wild. Oh, he could say plenty about them, too!

Instead, he said, "You could live on the beach out there. It's never cold."

"You were homeless?" Hank asked.

It was an _adventure_. Didn't he understand that?

"Could've," Alex clarified, "I didn't though."

Scott laughed again, softly. Alex did not even try imagining what was in his mind.

Apparently, Charles did. "Scott."

He raised his head. "Hm?"

"Give it to me."

"But… I wasn't…" Scott was a truly awful liar, fumbling and obviously avoiding eye contact.

"It's all right." Charles might as well have taken that tone with a four-year-old. Alex decided 'puppy' might have been right, after all. "I'm not angry."

Hank caught Scott's eye and murmured something that sound suspiciously like, "Neep."

Whatever that meant, it made both of them snicker and Scott handed a book to Charles, who took one look at it and remarked, "Oh, honestly, at the table?"

Hank read the title, " _The Wonderful O_? Isn't that a bit mature?"

"It's about pirates," Scott said. "And, um, this island, Ooroo, and the pirate captain bans the letter 'o' because his mother got stuck in a portal… it's actually really interesting and funny," he finished weakly, apparently realizing how babyish that sounded. A book about the alphabet? Wasn't he supposed to be fifteen?

Suddenly Alex had to laugh at the whole situation. "Remember the Eisenhower statue?" he asked.

"It was Walter Bedell Smith," Hank corrected.

"You were dancing upside down," Alex retorted. Hank could play at being an uptight smartypants all he liked—in fact, he pretty much _was_ an uptight smartypants—but Alex had seen him party. He knew for a fact that it happened, or had happened at least once.

Hank mumbled something about how yes, he did remember that.

"And that's Alexander Summers in a nutshell," Charles remarked.

Scott's head jerked up. He seemed more engaged than he had been the entire evening, obviously wide-eyed even with the glasses. "What did you say?"

"Oh, Scott, I'm sorry. Nothing more than a coincidence."

" _Alexander Summers_?"

Alex didn't like the way Scott said his name, like it meant something, like it was more than just what his parents happened to slap on him before dying. "How 'bout you cool it on the name?" he suggested. Scott did, and they lapsed once more into silence.

Alex really missed Sean. Everyone was so serious now, and he knew he did not belong anymore. What did you say, in this environment? It was… it was almost like being back with his parents. The couple who adopted Alex had done their best, but they were button-down types to say the least.

Finally, he tried, "You play soccer now?"

"Scott does."

"Baseball's better," Scott offered. "But with only one person, all you can really do is pitch and I'm not much of a pitcher."

Alex could not help himself. "You're more of a catcher?" he asked, his meaning quite clear from the barely-suppressed laughter in his voice.

"I… I guess so."

Scott obviously had no idea what he was saying, which made it that much more hilarious to Alex. He pressed a hand to his mouth, but he could not keep from laughing.

"That's enough," Charles told him.

After a moment's awkward quiet, Hank asked, "Were you on buses the whole time? While you were traveling."

"No, I had a motorcycle for a while."

"Where did you get a motorcycle?"

"I traded a couple weeks in a garage for this old Whizzer. That’s the one that looks like you put a motor on a Schwinn." He held a touch of a grudge against the man running the garage. Alex had spent his free time tuning up the thing, which looked about ready for scrap when he arrived. By the time he wanted to buy it, the garage owner told him it was now worth much more.

Alex had responded to that by smashing the lock on his garage and riding off in the middle of the night with the Whizzer.

Scott stood and walked out of the room.

"Scott."

He didn't even pause.

Charles looked at Alex, then sighed and shook his head.

"I stopped when you asked me to," Alex insisted.

"I know."

Somehow, that made Alex feel no better about it. Coming back here was like going back to his parents' house, something Alex no longer did. He felt out of place, too rough around the edges, too _real_ for this damned façade none of them seemed to see through.


	9. Needles

The lab smelled faintly of wet dog, but his damp hair helped Hank feel a little less like he was melting in the heat. That was possibly his favorite thing about his apishness, the extra wet hair when the temperature approached Hellish numbers.

A knock at the door came, completely expected.

"Come in!"

Hank did not look up from his microscope. When he told Alex he had abandoned his search for a cure, he told the truth. However, he had not abandoned any search to understand. Hank wanted to know how mutant genes really affected them, what was unique from one mutant to the next and what was universally true.

He could feel the anxiety shooting off of Scott, though, like pins pinging around the room. Hank finished his observation early.

Over the past months, he had come to think of Scott as a friend. He was surprisingly easy to talk to and although he did not quite grasp science as Hank did, he appreciated it. They joked when Scott helped out in the lab ("science class") and generally enjoyed one another's company.

Usually, although Hank knew Scott's age, he thought of him as a peer. Now he was very aware of how young Scott was. He looked… vulnerable.

"You just have to show him that you won't let him push you around. Once you do that, Alex will stop bothering you."

Probably.

In theory.

Hank knew Alex had chosen him as a target before because he was the weakest of the guys, but he had not expected Alex to do the same to a kid. And he could only guess that responding with strength would be effective, never having done so himself.

Scott shrugged. "I didn't even get what he was saying," he admitted.

Hank did not want to explain Alex's crude jokes. "It doesn't matter. He was trying to upset you to see if he could."

Apparently, this was a good enough answer. Scott looked down as he scuffed his shoes against the floor. "Thanks for doing the dishes. I didn't… I would've…"

"You can do the same for me some time."

"Am I in a lot of trouble?"

Over the past weeks, Scott had been quite obviously not all right, even for him. The nightmares were getting worse. Now he was lying, and had nearly asked Hank to lie for him. He walked off without a word. Being moody and withdrawn was normal for most teenagers, but not for Scott.

"Charles is probably just worried about you."

"What's your evidence," Scott retorted, sounding very much like a fifteen-year-old kid.

"I am, too."

Scott began to object, and Hank continued, "I'm your friend. I'm not going to bust you for having a couple of bad days. I'm just… here. If I can help, I will. Otherwise, it doesn't matter."

Hank had never been one to go prying into other people's problems. A rather self-conscious individual, he did not like having people poking about in his personal concerns and would not do the same to Scott.

"Actually I need a favor," Scott said. "I feel like a total dick even asking, but I really need your help."

Hank nodded. "Okay."

Scott swallowed. "I was hoping you'd look at my blood."

"Yeah, sure." Hank always liked a blood sample, but he was surprised. For months, Scott had been nervous in the lab. He still was. Hank had tried to help by explaining what everything was and what it did and why it wouldn't be used to hurt him—but Scott had a fear of sterile clinics carved in his bones. "I can take it now, if you want," he offered.

Scott nodded. He took a seat and Hank set out a capped syringe, a vial, cotton balls, and rubbing alcohol. "Is, is all that—do you really need all that?" Scott stammered, shifting away from the supplies.

"Unless you want to get sick," Hank said. "Your skin is basically protection. It keeps harmful things like bacteria out of your bloodstream. The problem is, it doesn't actually repel the bacteria, it just keeps them out, so if I don't disinfect your arm before taking your blood, you're likely to get an infection. You could—you could get sick," he amended, catching himself before using the word 'die'.

This explanation accompanied action. Hank soaked a cotton ball and swabbed Scott's skin, near his elbow. He felt Scott trembling as he did. When he glanced up, he saw that Scott had gone pale. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Scott nodded. "I just don't like needles."

And Hank didn't like bananas, but he didn't shake at the sight of one.

"What exactly am I looking for?"

"That's the thing, I'd rather—Christ on a cross, that hurts!"

Sliding a needle into a vein is careful work. Had he been at a less delicate task, he would have laughed. Instead, Hank focused on drawing blood. Only when he withdrawn the needle and pressed another cotton ball to Scott's arm did he comment, "Hold this down. Since when do you say 'Christ on a cross'?"

"Since the Professor heard me say 'fuck a duck'."

He couldn't argue with that. "So what is it you want me to look for?"

"You said everything you needed to know about a person was in a few drops of blood."

"Yeah, but…"

"I didn't want to, um, bias the testing. I think there's something weird about me."

Hank nodded. He expected to find nothing at all unusual. Scott was just having a tough time because he was fifteen. It wasn't easy to grow up even without the ability to decimate buildings with your eyes. If anyone knew the sensation of radical change it was Hank. After the "cure", he had looked at his own blood to see what he was. Scott wanted the same.

That wasn't unreasonable.

Sticking a band-aid onto Scott's arm, Hank said, "I'll tell you what I find."


	10. Heaven and Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter mentions several industries; this is based on the economy of Omaha. Nebraska Consolidated is now ConAgra.

Before the alarm finished blaring, Scott wanted to hide. The Professor was mad, and he woke with instinct coursing through his veins. Maybe it seemed like cowardice—maybe it _was_ cowardice—but it was also the only answer. The entire learning of his childhood told him to make himself scarce.

He spent most of the morning working up enough courage to show up. Being the only student in class had its advantages and disadvantages, and the inability to disappear was a disadvantage today. Back in Nebraska, he could have ditched. If anyone noticed, they wouldn't care.

What did an angry telepath do, exactly?

Scott imagined pain. He imagined what pain in his mind would feel like, the headaches only a million times worse. He imagined living out the rest of his life believing he was a chipmunk.

He had plenty of time to worry about it, and a very vivid imagination.

The last thing he expected was reality.

As the morning's heat moved into the territory of 'utterly stifling', Scott had lost all the cleverness he tried to plan. Like every time before, he stumbled to find the right words: "I guess it seemed pretty obvious, at first. We exist because we're here. Like, this is us, right here, and that's… you know, you're in your body, and then your body dies and you're not there anymore."

Neither of them had really known what to call this particular 'class'. Scott suggested English. The Professor suggested Philosophy. What it was, was surprisingly challenging for something that consisted primarily of talking.

Hesitant, he wondered, "Am I a terrible person for saying that? About dying?"

"Not at all," the Professor assured him. "Death is simply a fact. There's no need to be afraid to speak of it. Go on."

Scott did not know how to talk about death. There had never been any need in his life before. In an orphanage, death, who was dead… that was simply accepted. Talking about it was cruel.

He took a moment before continuing, "Okay, so… right, so we die and we're dead, only, I guess we want to believe this story, that we have a soul or whatever, and we don't actually die, we just go to Heaven or something. But that's not what the author's saying. He says the _totality_ of existence is identified with matter."

"Does he?"

"Um. Yeah?" Scott meant that to sound more certain than it did. He had been certain. Now he looked to the Professor, who regarded him impassively. _Craptastic._ "Why not just tell me?" he blurted, which at least succeeded in shattering that blank demeanor. "S-sorry. I didn't, um… I was…"

"What do you think?"

"I dunno."

"Well that's why I won't tell you the answers. After a point—once you get to college, perhaps more important than learning information is learning to think."

Scott's immediate reaction was to scoff. Who did he think he was talking to, Hank? "I'm not going to college."

"And why is that?"

"Because…" It seemed so obvious, Scott had never needed to give a reason. Life was always so simple. It was unpleasant, but it was simple, which helped because according to his last school so was he. Academic types went to college. Kids like Scott worked in Nebraska Consolidated, the breweries, and the stockyards. The Union Pacific, if he was really lucky—he loved trains.

Somehow, since arriving in New York, he hadn't considered where he would be once he hit eighteen.

"Well?"

Scott shrugged.

"Scott—I suppose that's something we can talk about when you're a little older."

"Hm." There wasn't a polite way to say that putting off a futile discussion was about as pointless as the discussion itself. He heard the frustration in the Professor's voice; doubting he could ease that, Scott tensed.

"So! Souls and matter, yes?"

"Right! That um, ah, according to him, there is no soul, there is no Heaven. We exist here as our body. That's what he, what the quote says. The soul is just in your head, your mind really, and when you die, you're gone."

Knowing more was expected of him, Scott scrounged up the words to continue: "Which could be a good thing or a bad thing. If it's only physical, existence is, then nobody gets to go to Heaven, but nobody has to go to Hell, either. And imagine if _you_ went to Heaven, but you loved somebody who went to Hell. There would be no end to it, and you'd spend an eternity alone, missing them. Forever."

"Heaven would be torment."

That was perhaps the closest to agreement Scott had heard in the past half hour. "So… was that it? Was it right?"

"I've told you before, there is no 'right' and no 'wrong'. I'd like to ask you something about your interpretation."

Scott nodded.

"If there is a Heaven, must there be a Hell?"

Wasn't that obvious?

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because… because if everyone went to Heaven, it wouldn't be Heaven. You'd just be back in a place like this, and then what's the point in having a Heaven at all?"

"Fair enough. Is it so bad here?"

"No, that's not—I didn't mean—not like _here_. On Earth. Not in Heaven."

"We're still on Earth," which was quite true.

For a while, Scott didn't respond. He picked at the loose threads on his jeans and listened to the clock tick. "I was in a foster home. They only kept me for two days." The air went out of his lungs. Two days with him made a couple prefer childlessness. It was a pain he did not expect anyone to understand. Then he shook it off and concluded, "This is pretty much different from every other part of Earth I've ever known. Was that okay?"

"Do you remember the full assignment?"

_But was that okay!_ Sometimes the lack of answer frustrated Scott beyond words. He still wasn't used to this, after months.

He swallowed his frustration and quoted, "'The totality of existence was finally identified with matter'."

"'Was identified.'"

"Yes." That was the quote, Scott was sure of it. He thought for a moment—then he realized. "Oh. Oh, I'm—I can't believe I missed that! So it wasn't what the author was saying at all! It was what he was _observing_ other people thinking! Well… not observing their thinking, of course, not like—but he's heard—it's what… it's what he's saying about what other people say?"

"Well done. You’ve spent the past…" the Professor checked his watch and continued, “…twenty-five minutes analyzing less than ten words. That’s something.”

Scott's attendance in school had always been spotty. He was "prone to illness".

In Omaha, they hadn't challenged that. There had been the occasional implication that his "illness" was self-induced. No one asked if someone was doing things to him. Every experiment, every test, every _thing_ he had no words for kept him away from school.

He thought that was difficult for the Professor and Hank to understand. Their lives had been education, so his generally poor academic performance was outside their comprehension. Neither had been cruel or even particularly impatient with him, but words of praise were rare and that comment had a visible effect on Scott.

"There was one more piece, I think?"

"Yeah, it was the one about poetry and stuff. What was really swell about that one, a lot of the time people talk about books like they're kind of useless. I mean, they don't think… it's not important to people, it's, y'know, for girls, but he says that's not true. What he's basically saying is that poets have this gift, this ability to see things other people can't, and a poet can—just by stating what's right in front of him—make ordinary people happy. Like the writer is… I guess like sharing a piece of himself. He has this gift, it makes writing into something, like a, a good deed. He could just hold it for himself, but it's not a choice, it's a gift. An innate ability, but a gift."

Scott looked at his hands as he spoke, babbling hunched over like he could physically guard against the sting of failure. He risked a glance at the Professor and could not help but grin. He ducked his head.

"What is it?"

"It's nothing, it's just… sometimes, when we're doing this, when I'm just talking and talking and not really saying anything, you get this look on your face. Like you're really happy."

The Professor raised an eyebrow. Part of the surprise in seeing him look flat-out happy was the lack of affectation. Normally, you saw exactly what he wanted you to see, nothing more. "I am happy."

"Well… yeah, but… I didn't mean like…" Scott found himself trying to explain, backtrack, to _somehow_ make this okay. He had not meant that as a general statement. He meant the Professor looked happy here, now.

"No, not in general—that's not the point." He leaned forward with a look of seriousness and honesty that was one more what he wanted to project. "I genuinely enjoy teaching you, and I am proud of you when you succeed."

Scott didn't know how to react to that. He had succeeded? _The Professor was proud of him?_

"Scott, when the school opens—and it is going to—it won't just be us anymore."

"Yeah, I know."

He hoped that would be an end to this discussion. It would have been, in Omaha, but the Professor's expression clearly said otherwise. So this could only really be about one thing.

Because it was summer, they had agreed there was no point in using a grading system, but Scott knew if they had he would be pretty consistently damp—below 'c' level. He was okay with English/Philosophy, and as long as science meant working with Hank he wasn't too concerned, but everything else was like a foreign language.

Which, thankfully, was one thing Scott did _not_ have to study. He was confused enough in English!

"I'll work harder," he said.

"Scott…"

"I will! I…" What? He would spend more hours staring at meaningless mixes of numbers and letters? Ask Hank to please go back to explaining everything, even though it meant a blank stare in response? With a sinking feeling, Scott realized this probably meant less time reading the kids' books they let him take from the library.

He loved those books.

"I dunno, I'll figure it out."

It didn't matter. They were dumb books, anyway, and he had better things to do with his time.

"What is it you think we're discussing, exactly?"

With his head down and his shoulders slumped, Scott had no idea exactly how like a guilty puppy he looked.

"I'm not ready to be in classes with other people. I won't be able to keep up."

It was pointless to insist otherwise. They both knew, anyway, that effort wouldn't make a difference. It hadn't so far.

"Oh, no, you're not off that easily. It would be premature to discount the possibility that someone might be better able to teach you, but I'll still be here. My concern," that word again!, "is that it's going to be several new people and in the past few months you've barely had to speak to anyone but me and Hank. I'm telling you this now so you can be ready when it actually happens."

Scott thought on that for a moment. He knew his ability to deal with new people was, to say the least, lacking. His mind flashed on the two he had met in town yesterday and he promptly silenced those thoughts. He hadn't mentioned it to the Professor and preferred he not know.

Instead he thought about Alex.

Hank said he only needed to stand up to Alex, but Scott had no idea how or when to do that. Avoiding Alex proved much easier. Was that the problem, that he had been rude with Alex?

"I don't start fights," Scott said. "I've been in a few, but I try not to."

"Why don't we leave it, for now?"

"Does that mean—"

"No that does not mean you're excused from maths! But we can work on that later. I'm beginning to feel like a jailer, keeping you inside on a day like this."

Scott did not need to be told twice. These philosophical discussions might be his favorite area of study, but _any_ area of study paled in comparison to being outside. He was at the door before he thought to pause and add, "I appreciate it, though." Going over the same basic algebraic principles and historical events couldn't be fun. Teaching someone who had been in remedial classes in a real school wasn't something anyone aspired to and he was genuinely touched at the Professor's willingness to continue helping him.

But that was more emotion than Scott was comfortable expressing. Instead he shrugged and mumbled, "Just saying."


	11. Cheating at Scrabble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding voting age – until 1971, the voting age was 21. Charles is still using it as a well-intentioned joke at Hank's expense, but less as much as if he said so ten years later.

After Scott left, Charles sat for a moment, quietly thinking through what had just happened. He waited until he heard the familiar thud of a football hitting the wall of the building. Then he headed for the lab.

"What's the project for today?"

Hank shrugged. "The usual."

It was his code for 'I'd as soon not discuss it', so Charles changed the subject. He respected that an idea sometimes had an incubation period and had not, in all honesty, come here to ask about Hank's work. "How many people, besides you and me, would we need for a school?"

Hank paused, his head tilted in thought. It was something Charles appreciated about Hank: he never gave an answer until he thought he had one. Oh, he engaged in speculation, but he never pretended to know when he really had no idea.

"Someone to teach English and History, I guess," Hank replied. "Other kids. I'd assumed you would look at it the other way."

"The other way?" Charles prompted. There was another way? But then, if anyone could speak on unconventional education it was Hank. By the end he was more than half a decade ahead of his peers. Hank was different, though. They couldn't count on other students being like him.

Apparently Hank had something else in mind. "I thought you would find others and see where they fit in. You can't bring in people who aren't mutants."

Hank tried to say this like it was a simple fact, but Charles heard the falter in his voice. He understood. Other mutants were one thing. Although months had passed, Hank was not ready to be seen by people who were not, in their own way, freaks. Charles was scarcely one to comment given that he barely left the house anymore.

"I suppose that's true. And of course students…"

"Well, yeah, they'd have to be mutants."

Of course they would, in a school for mutants, though Charles had been thinking of something else. "Hank, I'm going to have to talk to students—at least to their parents—in person."

A phone call might be enough for an adult mutant to visit and see what the school was about, but not for parents to trust a stranger with their children.

Hank nodded, but the look on his face answered Charles's unasked question. Charles couldn't drive. Hank was supportive, but not willing to help with that.

Just one more obstacle.

"Nothing is more important to me than helping people like us, protecting them, but I'm beginning to question whether I'm the right person for the job."

"There's no one better," Hank replied. "There's no one else at all, really, but no one could be more suited to it."

"Thank you. They are challenging, though, aren't they? Young people."

"Even you were a teenager once, Charles."

He had to laugh at that. What else could he do? Hank was surprisingly perceptive for someone who knocked over his own beakers when he had to speak to a girl. "Yes, I suppose I was," Charles agreed.

"And now you're old."

"Thank you, Hank."

"I mean really old."

Hank was enjoying this far too much.

"Yes, I—"

"You're going gray."

"Oh, for goodness' sake!"

But it was impossible to be angry with Hank, because he was laughing and there was too much solemnity in this house.

"This is what the two of you get up to, isn't it?" Charles asked. "Jokes about the elderly for those of us old enough to vote." He was not the sort to roll his eyes, but there were rolled eyes in his tone.

"Do you vote?" Hank asked, surprised. "I thought you were English."

"I am English. I became an American citizen as a child, but I lived in England so long it seemed silly not to have my citizenship status reinstated." Bureaucracies were so much easier to handle with a telepathic nudge!

"Ah. Well, anyway, it makes up for you cheating in Scrabble."

"I do not cheat in Scrabble."

The protest fell on deaf ears. No one played Scrabble with Charles. Apparently they thought telepathy too big a temptation to resist. Charles didn't mind, largely because in the past months he had noticed that the more Scott read, the more his vocabulary matured.

Well, he had pride enough to avoid losing a board game to someone half his age!

"Do you ever find him somewhat infuriating?" Charles wondered.

"Alex?"

"Scott."

"Not really. Why?"

Charles sighed. "Because I may be losing my patience with him."

Generally, he kept his temper in check with everyone, but especially around Scott. Today that hadn't worked because it hadn't mattered that Charles wasn't angry. He wasn't sure which bothered him more, his seeming inability to communicate or the fact that he had sent Scott out of the room rather than deal with him.

Of the two Summerses, Scott and Hank were much more peacefully compatible. Had Hank and Alex ever held a conversation? That was just the trouble, though. Scott was sensitive for someone at his age. It made him a wonderful friend to Hank, but far too easily wounded.

Feeling the need to explain himself, Charles continued, "He was just waiting for me to hit him. I've never been looked at that way in my life before meeting Scott, and I don't care for it."

"It's nothing to do with you, it's to do with—"

"Omaha," Charles said. "I know, though I still find it strange he sees me as more threatening than you."

"Well I may have superior strength, but you have authority."

"When the school opens and other students begin to arrive, he won't be able to cope. I won't make him leave, you know I won't, but I'm not prepared for this sort of situation."

"You told him that, didn't you?" Hank asked.

"He took it badly."

There was an almost derisive humor in his voice as Hank agreed, "Of course. For what it's worth, I'm not too worried."

"He thought I was calling him stupid."

"That's why I'm not worried."

Charles was now thoroughly lost. "I'm sorry—would you explain that?"

Hank shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. "It's not the word I would use," he said, fiddling with his glasses, "but compared to you and me, Scott's…"

Scott was a fairly bright kid, but he was largely uneducated. Compared with someone who had earned a doctorate at Oxford and someone who at his age had graduated Harvard, maybe Scott _was_ stupid.

Or rather, "Normal." What a strange word! "He's normal."

Charles laughed at the thought, because it was too painful to bear, otherwise. Something he had shunned, something Raven had longed for, that was precisely Scott's torment, wasn't it? He was just a normal teenage boy. He thought about sports, listened to rock and roll, and often couldn't sit still for ten minutes.

If he couldn't blow up buildings by looking at them and hadn't been raised in an orphanage by a twisted scientist, Scott might be all but indistinguishable from others his own age.

"Hank, nothing worries you, does it?"

Hank considered before giving his answer. "Well," he decided, "I never expect situations to turn out as I'd like them to, outside the lab."

Charles nearly objected. He did _not_ expect all situations would turn out as he liked! When they faced off against Shaw, he had never expected to end up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. When Moira called him all those months ago saying she needed him, he had never expected to end up responsible for a fifteen-year-old.

All those years ago, following a strange sound in the house, he had never expected to find another mutant.

No, plenty of things did not go according to plan.

"So when did you lose your temper?" Hank asked.

"When I realized he didn't hear a word I said."

It was the truest answer Charles could give. He lost his temper, nearly, because Scott just _wouldn't listen_.

"Just a bad day, I suppose," he said, no longer so keen on discussing this with Hank. With anyone, for that matter. It had happened, it was over. He wouldn't let it happen again.


	12. The Incident with the Laundry Room Door

Scott sat on the floor, his back to the wall. Snips of memory played through his mind—a woman's hand, the color blue, strains of a tune played on the piano—and he tried to make himself focus on the book resting open against his knees.

While he read, he picked at the threads on his jeans. Every few times he wore them, the Professor would look at the more-gaping knee with disapproval and Scott would swear to himself he would stop picking at the threads.

It did no good. He disappeared into a book and his fingers acted on their own. The tear was nearly seam to seam now.

The door opened.

"Oh…"

Scott looked up. Alex stood there, looking at the machine in dismay.

"It's just the dryer. You can use the washer."

"Oh. Good."

Alex had arrived on Monday. It was Saturday now and, as far as Scott knew, this was the first time Alex had done his laundry.

 _Well. That's something_ , he thought, the first thing he and Alex actually had in common: neither of them liked doing laundry. Scott was mostly used to it because of the way people at school would react to him. Growing up in an orphanage, it wasn't like anyone cared when and if he cleaned his clothes.

He didn't have to do any of the things other kids at school complained about, actually. No one made him bathe every day, no one made him eat vegetables, no one made him do his laundry and certainly no one did it for him. He never did the vegetable thing. As for the other two, he was freak enough. He didn't need to be the freak who smelled bad.

"It's worse for Charles and Hank."

Alex shut the machine with a bang. "What is?"

Scott shrugged. He shouldn't have said anything. "Nothing, just, they really don't like doing laundry. They don't say it, but…"

"You like doing laundry?"

"No." That was stupid. "Who likes doing laundry? I just—I grew up in an orphanage. I don't care, I'm used to it."

Hank's mom probably did his laundry when he was growing up, and the Professor… Scott could not imagine the Professor as a child or anyone growing up in a place like this.

Laundry was a chore to Scott but nothing unusual. It wasn't even as bad as math homework.

He closed the book and set it aside. Then he thought better and flipped it, letting the words breathe and hiding the picture on the cover. Scott did not want Alex knowing he was reading about two dogs and a cat, particularly given how much he liked the book.

This one had nothing on Steinbeck, though. The thought made him smile. Only a day and a half from now, Scott would know what happened to Lennie and George! And he had just enough distance to think it might be a happy ending.

Forcing himself to focus on the present conversation rather than _Of Mice and Men_ , he asked, "What, uh, about you?"

Alex looked at him curiously. The expression on his face was actually not so different from the way Scott's peers looked at him a few years back before he became responsible enough to shower every day. Nevertheless, his tone was only wary.

"You're asking if I like doing laundry?"

"Well…" Scott was a bad liar. He cleared his throat. "I mean, I know you had parents, I… was just asking."

"I don't care about laundry," Alex said.

Scott nodded.

He guessed that Alex really did mind. Scott was nearly sixteen years old, but sitting on the floor of the laundry room on a Saturday night didn't bother him. There were far groovier places in the world, far more exciting places a young person could be.

Scott didn't want to be there. He was _home_. How could he want to be anywhere else?

But Alex did.

"An orphanage?"

"Huh?"

"You grew up in an orphanage?" Alex asked.

Scott nodded again.

"What was it like?"

He shrugged. "Crummy. Thoroughly."

"Yeah."

"In Omaha."

"Omaha?"

"Yeah. In Nebraska."

"Yeah, I know where Omaha is, I'm just surprised. I grew up right by Spring Lake."

Something else they had in common, though Spring Lake was a far nicer part of Omaha than the neighborhood Scott once called home.

"What's with the numbers?" Alex asked, indicating Scott's hand. He had the numbers 1-9 scrawled on the backs of his fingers.

"Nothing."

The dryer stopped. Scott scrambled to his feet and started folding his clothes. Suddenly he wished they were doing something else, anything else, something that didn't involve underwear visibility. He hid that, quickly, under a t-shirt.

Alex snickered. "So you're not a chick. The hair was kind of confusing."

Scott paused folding to look at Alex. _Show him that you won't let him push you around._

"Chicks obsess about hair," he retorted. He did not have much in the way of clothes, so when he returned attention to his chore he had only a few items left.

"Yeah. _I'm_ the girl."

Scott shrugged. "You said it," he muttered.

"That was lame."

Scott gathered his laundry in his arms. He didn't make eye contact. He couldn't make eye contact. But hopefully Alex understood that, given the chance, Scott would have looked him right in the eye as he said, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

Then he turned to walk out of the room. He would've, too, but for a clap of splintering thunder. Scott wasn't sure what happened. Everything was fine, then there was light and he blinked and...

"Aw, fuck a whole fucking flock," he swore.

Part of the laundry room door hung from its hinges, but segments had broken off and lay on the floor. They and the remaining pieces bore scorch marks.

"Dunno what you're cussin' about," Alex murmured.

Neither of them bothered leaving, nor did they have anything left to say to one another. They waited for the inevitable. While they did, both looked at the door. It was busted. It was beyond busted. Scott tried to imagine how it could possibly be fixed.

Somehow, it never occurred to him to wonder what had happened. He knew Alex had done it. That must have been Alex's power—whatever he had done.

When the Professor arrived, he looked from one to the other. Scott and Alex both just stood there. For his part, Scott had no idea what he ought to say, but he knew better than to speak until spoken to in a situation like this.

"Well…" the Professor prompted.

"I—"

"I did it," Scott interrupted Alex. He glanced between the two, then clutched his laundry tighter and stared at the floor. "Don't be mad at Alex. It was my fault."

"Really."

It was not a question.

Scott nodded. "Uh-huh. Yeah. I-I lost control. I'm really sorry." The strange thing was that the note of remorse in his voice was genuine. As he took responsibility for something he had not done, Scott felt genuinely sorry for it.

He reasoned that he ought to have just kept his mouth shut or at least not run away, but neither thing was the source of his regret.

"You're sure this was you?"

Scott nodded again.

"Look at me."

With his glasses, it was impossible to know where Scott was looking, but he tilted his head in the right direction.

"Is there _anything_ you'd like to say, Scott?" When Scott remained silent, the Professor told him, "Fine. Then you're grounded."

 _Grounded_?

Scott had never been grounded. In the orphanage, he had been shouted at or smacked around. Here he had spent extra weeks washing dishes or been given looks of disapproval if he neglected his math assignment—which he did, too often, and those looks were enough to make him sit down and try to figure out why that stupid triangle represented subtraction. He had never been grounded, though. It had never been mentioned as an option.

"But what about…" _what about George and Lennie._ Scott had to know what happened! It had been weeks! He glanced at Alex again.

"Charles—"

What was Alex doing? Didn't he understand? He needed only to keep his mouth shut for five minutes.

Then again, that could have been too much to ask of Alex.

"What about errands and stuff?" Scott interrupted again. Because of Charles's limited mobility and Hank's unwillingness to be seen by others, Scott was responsible for any necessary errands. He didn't mind, but he couldn't take care of anything when he was grounded.

The Professor had an answer for that.

"Alex can take over. There," sounding both satisfied and unhappy, "now you're both being punished."


	13. The Beatles are Cool

That Sunday was an unusual day for Hank, starting the moment he looked out the window and saw Scott hurl a piece of wood like some sort of bedoorknobbed Frisbee. He opened the window.

"Hey, Scott!"

"Yeah?"

Hank wanted to ask a question, but before he could do that, he needed to put his question into words. He looked from Scott to the board now lying in the grass. "What's going on?"

"I broke the door," Scott replied.

Hank blinked. _Broke the door._ Well, he was scarcely one to judge: he had once broken an entire laboratory.

No reply came to mind so Hank remained silent, which prompted Scott to explain, "So now I'm clearing it up."

"I could help."

"You don't have to."

Hank somersaulted through the window. Of course he didn't _have_ to help, any more than he _had_ to somersault through the window. When he approached, he guessed at why Scott didn't want his help. He had a screwdriver jammed in his back pocket, his hand hovering over it protectively.

"Relax," Hank assured him, "I'll let you do the fun stuff."

Which is how, not a quarter of an hour later, he found himself gripping the remaining large piece of door. It wasn't going to be salvaged: a few pieces had been sheared out. The rest still held to the jamb, hinged and useless. "Go ahead."

As Scott twisted the screws out, Hank ran a finger along the blackened edge where a piece had been ripped from the door.

"What did you say happened?" he asked, knowing Scott had _not_ said. Not really.

"I broke the door," Scott replied.

"With your ability?"

"Um, yeah. Yeah."

He finished with the top hinge and knelt for easy access to the other.

"What did Charles say?" Hank wondered.

"That I'm grounded."

"Weak," Hank offered in sympathy, but half-absently, once more attentive more to the charred edge of the door. "So, what'd you think of 'Can't Buy Me Love'?"

Scott deemed it, "Okay, I guess."

"Since when are you indifferent to music?"

"Sometimes I am!"

 _Some_ people were indifferent to music. Scott, on the other hand…

"Didn't you say you wanted to rip out Tony Andreason's larynx?"

"Tony Andreason has that coming."

To keep the conversation from turning to an awkward silence, Hank offered a noncommittal, "Well, I think the Beatles are cool."

"Have you ever wondered about that?"

"What?"

"Why we say 'cool'."

"No, but I don't know why. In this weather, I wouldn't mind 'cool'. It makes more sense than 'groovy'."

"Really? I thought 'groovy' was like records. I mean, it's pretty fantastic that we have recorded music and we can listen to it, like, any time at all."

Hank had to agree, "Okay, 'groovy' is definitely cool."

The second of the hinges freed, sending the full weight of the laundry room door into Hank's left hand. It may as well have been made of feathers for all the weight bothered him, but although he didn't _need_ help, he didn't object to Scott 'helping'.

Similar to working in the lab, Scott was enthusiastic but unnecessary. Hank liked having him around, anyway. It didn't matter that Scott had no knack for science and utterly lacked a scientist's curiosity. Conducting tests, like carrying a broken door, was surprisingly fun in the right company.

They maneuvered the door outside.

"What will you do with it now?" Hank wondered.

The response, silence, gave an honest answer: Scott had no idea. After a while he suggested, "Kindling?"

Hank thought of a project in the lab and the way Scott had Frisbeed a piece of door earlier. "I have an idea."

"What?"

"Tell you after breakfast."

"But it's almost one o'clock."

"Lunch, then."

He turned the conversation back to music as they headed to the kitchen, thinking about the whole situation with the laundry room door. That Charles suddenly believed in grounding was news, too. Maybe he had been a bit too dismissive of his fraying temper a few days ago.

Hank was too lost in his thoughts to pay much mind to his surroundings, but he had to say something when he noticed Scott swigging milk from the bottle.

"We all drink that."

Actually, mostly Scott drank milk. Hank had been through one too many episodes of absent-minded 'oh, this looks okay' drinks—one could only taste turned milk so many times before losing affection for the stuff. Charles seemed to be attempting to systematically replace his blood with black tea.

Nevertheless, not drinking from the bottle was common courtesy.

"It could be the last bit," Scott argued weakly.

Hank pointedly glanced at the bottle, still almost half-full. Scott looked lost for words. Then he raised the bottle once more.

"You're not gonna…" Hank trailed off as the amount of liquid left slowly decreased. He shifted from incredulous to impressed as Scott drained half a pint in one long sip.

"Wow. You could be the chick in the commercials, if you just had nicer tits."

Neither of them had noticed Alex's arrival. Scott hauled back, the empty bottle still in his hand, and might have hurled it had Hank not caught his arm. When Scott fought to throw the bottle at Alex, Hank tightened his grip.

"Not worth it," he warned. He did not want to spell out that Scott ought to watch his behavior when he already had a record punishment. Besides, he needed to fight smarter. Alex was picking on weakness; Hank guessed he would respond to violence with more violence.

Scott sighed and yanked to free his arm. This time Hank let him go. "Later," he muttered, and cast a filthy look at Alex before leaving.

Hank did not mention this. Alex and Scott would sort this out themselves, or it would be forgotten, like his conflict with Alex. Either way it wasn't Hank's to resolve.

Scott made himself scarce for the remainder of the afternoon. Hank found him in one of the aching limbo hours of summer, when a dipping sun and merciful breeze tricked them into mistaking any temperature in the double digits for cool weather.

Or rather, that was when Scott found Hank.

Little as Scott like the lab, he knew where to go when he needed help. "I still can't think what to do with the door."

"I've been working on this."

Given the first incident with the visor, Hank wanted to be absolutely certain before offering it again. Unfortunately, he neither was nor could be. Only Scott could test that. Holding it in his hand now, Hank only barely offered it out. "If you want to."

Scott took it hesitantly. "It's just 'cause last time…"

"You'll have to use your power again eventually." Hank knew that was low, but it was true, and they both knew Scott preferred utter disasters to occur with Hank rather than Charles. Besides… he _really_ wanted to test the visor.

"I could try it. But how does that help with the door?"

Hank grinned.

Five minutes later, they stood outside. Hank held a piece of the broken door. Scott stood nearby, bracing himself in case the visor broke again.

"Ready?"

"Ready!"

Hank tossed the broken door. With his strength, it flew yards ahead before Scott had the chance to react. Then a beam of red light cut through the air where the door had been not a second before. He tried twice more, more wildly off each time, before the door fell to the ground.

For his part in this, Hank had not expected Scott to hit the target every time. He was more focused on the light of Scott's power. The difference between this and Scott's ability unchecked was impossible to overlook. He had control now. It wasn't total and depended on an external factor, but it was better than nothing.

"Try again?" Hank asked.

"Do it."

Hank tossed another piece of broken door. Again Scott missed, more widely this time.

"It doesn't matter if you hit it," Hank reminded him. "It's just for practice."

Scott's, "I know," was not encouraging.

"One more time?"

Scott nodded.

Hank wanted to give him some sort of advice, something to help him stay calm and not overthink… but, unable to think of anything, he simply tossed the next piece of broken door. It arced up through the air.

The door fragment began its descent, spinning down towards the earth, and— _bam_. A direct hit burst the fragment into smaller pieces. Hank probably would have heard them hit the ground. He didn't, though—not over the sound of Scott laughing.

"Well done, both of you." Neither of them had heard Charles arrive.

Scott went quiet and jammed his hands in his pockets.

"I realize you're angry with me—"

"'m not angry."

Hank looked between the two, keenly aware of a disconnect. When had it become so easy for him to see these things? Maybe it was because Charles had outright stated his waning patience, or because Scott had always been transparent. He wanted to point this out to both of them.

Instead he murmured, "Neep."

Scott ducked his head to hide that he was laughing. Then, "Aw, does this mean I'm back to training?"

"I'm afraid we will have to discuss it," Charles confirmed.

"'kay."

"You may not see it this way, but this is a good thing, Scott. You have a degree of control you've never had before, this device of Hank's may be the key to discovering the potential of your abilities. It's a whole new realm of possibility."

"Can I have my glasses back, please?"

Hank handed him his glasses. The swap was awkward, Scott trying to hold both the visor and glasses, unable to see at all, but he managed. He offered the visor to Hank, who hesitated. "Would you mind taking it back to the lab for me?"

"No problem."

Hank waited for him to be out of earshot before saying, "Scott shouldn't be grounded for breaking the door."

"Oh?"

Hank had seen that look before. Charles always responded the same way to anyone challenging his authority or telling him he couldn't do something: with a mix of affront and amusement.

"The pieces were charred. Scott's ability produces pure force; heat is only a byproduct of Alex's mutation."

Charles responded with that same look of disbelief. "Do you think I didn't realize? Scott wouldn't have broken the door, he would have blasted a hole through the entire house. He's not grounded for breaking the door, he's grounded for lying."

Hank couldn't argue with that. Instead he asked, "How's the school coming?"

"I thought about what you said," Charles replied, "and you're right. The best approach is to begin with people like us. Unfortunately there are fewer mutants my age than there are youngsters, but we'll make it work. A safe place, that's what matters most."

"Have you found anyone?"

Generally, Charles was emotionally restrained. He showed joy and anger and grief in his own way, but rarely lost himself to emotion.

Hank had never seen him as he was now, grinning like a jack-o-lantern with its candle lit.

"I found a mutant with a degree in history."

"Any interest in the school?"

"She's coming to visit on Tuesday."


	14. Ruth

Finding a mutant faculty to teach mutant children in a mutant school was about as easy to achieve as it was to explain in a concise sentence. Cerebro found many mutants, but often they were children, or had fallen into complacency as Darwin had before the experiment.

The comparison made Charles cringe inside. Had they never approached Darwin, he would be alive today…

He shook his head and refocused on the sense of a mutant mind not two miles away. It seemed half the mutants in the world had refused to listen before he found Ruth Bat-Seraph. She was _perfect_.

She had actually listened to his idea for a school!

Most mutants within a reasonable area had been reluctant to speak with him. Thanks to his limited portability—Charles could no longer drive, Hank flat-out refused, and he had not bothered asking Alex—these conversations took place over the telephone rather than in person. Many calls asking about an individual's oft-concealed mutant ability were poorly received.

Charles had lost track of the number of times someone told him to 'never call here again'. Sometimes it seemed every possible seven-digit permutation (he tried not to use that word; it confused Scott, who was still a little fuzzy on mutation in general and not particularly gifted in maths, either) held nothing but denial.

So really, he thought, his need to track her approach was understandable. He felt like a kid at Christmas, almost like he had been given a second chance. He might never have his legs back, but he felt the embers of hope begin to glow again.

She was only a mile away now. Charles found himself restless.

It's not easy to pace in a wheelchair and he did not want to appear over-eager. Hank's lab and Cerebro were nearby one another, so it was scarcely his fault he overheard: "…not sure I'm allowed to, I'm supposed to be grounded."

"'Grounded' means you have to stay here. You can borrow my books."

"But I like it here. The library's the only reason that's a punishment."

Charles had not intended to do any of this, had barely known he had it in him to ground anyone until he heard himself say the words. He had certainly not intended to deprive Scott of books. Some hidden maturity enabled him to use the words 'you're grounded', but 'and no books' was beyond him.

He only caught that piece of the conversation, so he did not know how it ended. Instead he knocked and told them, "I realize I've mentioned this to both of you before, but I'm meeting with someone today who's interested in the school."

It was amazing how Scott and Hank both looked like guilty children as they tried not to respond.

"Scott, a month from now she may very well be your history teacher."

Scott mumbled something unintelligible.

Charles sighed, but that was enough. He knew he would be meeting with her alone.

Ruth Bat-Seraph was not what he had expected. Because she had so recently graduated, he thought she would be in her early twenties. She appeared to be closer to thirty.

She was tall for a woman, with masses of curly brown hair that could do with a comb but just might break its teeth. Although not overtly aggressive in any way, she stood with her feet shoulder-width apart in an instinctive defensive stance. She looked pleasant enough, but with a toughness just below the surface that dared anyone to mouth off to her or stare at her chest.

Which wasn't easy, since he was only human and she wasn't wearing a bra.

"Miss Bat-Seraph, it's wonderful to meet you in person."

He was as intellectually smitten with her as he had been over the telephone. Her frank manner carried over into an overwhelming impression that she was ready for anything.

She nodded. "Likewise."

"Please come in."

Charles had been too absorbed in his analysis of her to notice the cat darting inside a moment before.

He had introduced the idea of a school three times, in person. All three times had been with mutants he already knew, who were already his friends. Because that was not the case now, he began with, "You mentioned that your mutation enhances your physical abilities."

"Yes."

"What—" The question would have been along the lines of, _what sorts of things can you do?_ , had he not turned to see that she was now halfway across the room. "I see!"

She crossed the room again at a normal pace, explaining, "I can run farther and faster than most people, turn more sharply, react more readily." Now that he heard her string together so many words at once, Charles noticed her accent, something foreign and sharp. "I have been shot…" The words seemed not to fit properly, like they and her teeth were battling for the same space.

Absorbed in this thought, he barely registered at first what she'd said. "I'm sorry—you've been shot?"

"Yes." She rolled up her sleeve to show a scar on her arm. "This was a… you call them assault rifles, I think? This is what it takes. Otherwise it is like I am punched. Not very hard."

Sometimes he envied people with physical abilities. Being shot for him was like spending weeks in the hospital and then the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

He was still marveling when she prompted, "You did not call me here to discuss my mutations."

"No," Charles agreed. "Please have a seat, Miss Bat-Seraph."

"Ruth," she said. "It is too polite. Besides, you say it wrong!" She seemed amused by this. Charles wanted to apologize, but sensed that would be inappropriate. After all, she did not seem offended.

Instead, he ceded, "Ruth." He wasn't sure what had been funny about that, because she seemed more to be laughing at circumstance than at him, and it was a contagious sort of joy. Charles found himself cheered in spite of not understanding her happiness.

When he tried explaining the school to Hank, he had been met with general support and a lot of logical questions to which he had not yet considered the answers. Scott's opinion was difficult to guess, because his response was the one he sensed Charles wanted to hear. Alex shrugged like he didn't care, but was clearly unhappy about it.

Ruth was a stranger. He did not know how to appeal to her, so he just told her the truth.

"Mutation in isolation can be frightening, even dangerous, for mutants and those around them. My goal is to create a safe place for all mutants, somewhere they can learn to control their abilities." Why did it sound so good in his head and so clumsy when he tried to say it aloud?

"And this would be a school."

He nodded. "A sort of mutant academy. A small one, at first, but sure to grow." Charles was past dreaming of any immediate success. He was rather more concerned about speaking with parents—that he needed to do in person, which would be quite the achievement as he rarely left the house anymore.

Ruth, meanwhile, looked somewhere between unconvinced and unimpressed.

Charles tried to think of something, anything that might convince her. He liked this woman. He liked her frankness, he liked that she seemed to listen as he spoke, and he liked the confidence she exuded.

They needed that confidence. They needed someone else who, like Charles, wore her power comfortably.

"And is she one of your students?" Ruth asked.

"I'm sorry?"

He followed her gaze.

"Yes, he is."

In a way, Scott had that coming. He wore his hair long, hid his face, and was just young enough to be plausibly androgynous. All the same Charles hoped Scott hadn't overheard—then he heard the door open and realized Scott had been carrying the cat.

As long as it didn't become a pattern, he wouldn't say anything.

"Scott."

It was beyond a desperate attempt: Scott was a very likeable boy once you got to know him. Unfortunately, he was none too easy to get to know, and he wasn't likely to say much to Ruth.

Scott hesitated. Charles half expected him to run away, like he had a few months ago when Moira visited. From the looks of him, Scott half expected _himself_ to run away. Instead he stepped into the room, extended his hand, and said, "It's very nice to meet you, Miss…"

"Bat-Seraph," she supplied, shaking his hand. 'Bat' sounded not like the flying pest but nearer the second syllable of the word 'robot'.

"It's very nice to meet you, Miss Bat-Seraph."

"What is it you can do?" she asked. "Your mutation."

"I, um, blow stuff up."

"Fun!" Ruth replied, genuinely meaning it.

Scott didn't last more than a minute before giving an excuse about needing to study, but while he and Ruth exchanged polite words, neither of them seemed to connect with one another. It was strange to watch.

When Charles first met Scott, he had felt an immediate connection to him. He had needed to help him, protect him—but why should Ruth feel the same? Traces of that damage were still present. Scott had a vulnerability and guilelessness that made him seem younger than fifteen. He wasn't all broken now, though. He wasn't terrified or homeless as he had been then.

To Ruth, he was probably just some polite, shy kid she wouldn't think twice about.

"Have you ever thought about teaching?" Charles wondered. He hadn't, in truth, besides knowing that was simply what one did with a considerable accumulation of knowledge.

"I never imagined myself in a place like this," Ruth replied, nothing but certainty in her voice.

Was that her way of telling him no? It sounded a lot like 'no'. Charles tried to determine what she meant by 'a place like this'. Mutant students? A small school, a new school?

And why did he keep hearing that?

He took a breath, lost of anything but hope that the words would come out right. They didn't. Nothing did, because he was interrupted by a shouted obscenity followed by a dull thud. And another thud, and a shout, then the sounds were too mingled to separate, but their meaning was clear: Alex and Scott were fighting.

Not arguing.

"I'm so sorry," he told Ruth, already turning to go. He wasn't sure how he would actually break up a fight. He knew Scott only needed to be told to back off and he would, but Alex might continue fighting. Could he telepathically control both of them, even briefly?

His concern turned out to be unnecessary.

Alex had the upper hand in the fight, unsurprisingly since he was bigger—they were nearly the same height, but Alex was strong and solid while Scott was approaching six feet of cardboard-jointed awkwardness. Scott continued with a valiant effort, though, punching into Alex's side only somewhat ineffectually.

"Alex, let him go! Scott, stop it!"

Neither of them listened.

What the hell was Charles supposed to do? He was _crippled_.

"Both of you—"

What happened next was so quick he could not quite follow it.

Ruth blurred past. She had her hand on Alex's wrist, then jabbed at his throat. It was not how Charles wanted the fight broken up, but he knew he could have shouted himself hoarse to no effect. Three seconds of Ruth's intervention and Alex and Scott were on opposite sides of the hall, Alex wheezing to catch his breath and Scott curled up with his back to the wall.

Charles looked between the three of them with a growing sense of despair.

Alex and Scott were never going to get along, were they?

And after what she had just seen, Ruth would never agree to teach here.

"I expect more of both of you."

"It's not his fault." Scott's voice was muffled. He was so curled up it was difficult to tell he was speaking, though the stress in his voice was impossible to miss. "I started it."

"You should know better. And Alex, for God's sake, you're an adult."

Alex looked like he wanted to object, but still had his hand against his throat. Ruth must have done a number on him!

"Your hand will be fine," she told him, "and your neck. Sore for a few days, then fine. And stop hitting children."

"I started it," Scott reminded her.

"All right, enough, all of you. Scott, Alex, you're to stay away from one another until you can control yourselves. Understood?"

"Yessir."

Alex nodded.

"Ruth… I'll show you out." Charles waited until the boys might possibly not overhear to tell her, "I'm terribly sorry about all this."

"Oh, it was your fault?"

Somehow her heavy accent made the sarcasm that much more reassuring.

"I would consider it a personal favor if you thought about taking a teaching position." He felt like he was asking for the moon saying so, but he had to try. Ruth had listened as no one else had and shown more interest in the school than had anyone besides Hank.

"I would not need to."

"Please, just think about it. Mutants deserve a place to—"

"No, I want the job. And I can teach Scott to defend himself, too."

Charles was not sure how he felt about Scott being taught to fight. If Ruth wanted to offer and Scott chose to learn, that was fine, but Charles did not know that he would encourage it.

His uncertainty must have shown, because Ruth insisted, "He is smaller, he needs the help."

She had a point about that. Leaving the boy curled up on the floor like that had been terribly cold—but what choice did he have?

He put those thoughts aside. Scott and Alex would be here later. Ruth would not.

"May I ask you a personal question?"

"Yes, of course," she replied, "but I will not promise to answer."

Charles smiled. "Fair enough. You said you never imagined yourself somewhere like this. What did you mean by that?"

"Oh… genteel," she said. "Well-mannered, quiet… opulent… I thought I would never truly have a place here. Much as I like your idea of a school for mutants, I was not sure I could be a part of it. But," she continued with a shrug, "I saw the boys fighting, and it was much more what I know."

"Fighting?"

"People are people, mutated or no."


	15. Grounded For All Eternity

The following morning, Charles found a note taped to a box of tea.

_Profesor_

_I'm sorry._

Scott's note sparked two thoughts. First, he really ought to be able to spell 'Professor' by this point. Second, to what precisely did this apology refer—what was that boy up to now? Charles thought for a moment. Scott had been a challenge lately, but even the fight with Alex yesterday was fairly minor.

He searched for Scott telepathically, if for no other reason than to tell him that whatever it was, he likely owed an explanation more than an apology. With three minds besides his own in the house, Charles should have needed only seconds to find Scott.

Ah. Well, this could be problematic, though at least the apology made sense.

Scott was out of range.

About an hour later, Charles had not yet decided if he felt angry, concerned, or flat-out confused. Or rather, he felt all of those, and as he watched Scott slip into the house he tried to decide which he felt more than the others.

Scott kept his head down. He shut the door as softly as possible, apparently clinging to the hope his absence had gone unnoticed.

"Scott."

He froze.

"I… um…"

Charles waited, but Scott couldn't find the words.

"We are going to have a talk about this." He did not particularly want to. Letting the matter drop would have been far easier; Scott had never been much trouble before and did not appear to have been up to anything now. Charles had grounded him, though. He'd done that for a reason and now felt he had no choice but to follow through.

Scott followed him into the room he had once dubbed the lounge, based on the idea that 'this is the house where Clue happened'. Charles thought of it as a sitting room, since that's what his parents had called it and he didn't know of any murders that had occurred here. There was probably at least one in a house this old, but it really wasn't the sort of thing he felt overly inclined to investigate.

"Sit down."

After some thought, Charles had determined the best logical approach to the situation. He was open to other ideas, but Scott remained silent as Charles poured two cups of tea and pushed one towards Scott. "Don't drink yet, it's hot."

The note was there, too, a mix of accusation and reminder.

Scott sat quietly until Charles prompted, "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

"No," Scott replied. "I know what I did was wrong."

Charles resisted the urge to sigh. How was he meant to approach this? He wasn't even sure what Scott had done! "Where were you?"

"The library."

"You went to the library."

Scott searched for words, yet when he found his answer, it was not what Charles expected. "You told me once you could find my brightest memories."

"Yes, I can." In spite of his frustration, Charles was pleased at the mention. Parts of Scott's mind were carefully guarded. "Would you like me to do that?"

"Would you take them away?" he asked. "Like you did for Moira?"

After all these months, Scott still looked to him in fear. Charles tried to ignore it. He could scarcely blame Scott after all that happened to him back at the orphanage—but that was a new low.

"I could," he admitted, "but I wouldn't."

"Please."

What?

"Why?"

"'Cause sometimes when I dream I can still remember. It's like having this person in my head who I was supposed to be only I'm not. The orphanage… made me into something else. Now it's a ghost that won't leave me alone."

Scott did not often talk about the orphanage, but when he did, it was unfailingly heartbreaking. Now he was asking for help and much as Charles wanted to help him, there had to be another way.

He shook his head. "I can't do that, I can't believe that person you might have been is lost." Perhaps worst was the implication that Scott's identity and his future had been determined by those acts of cruelty. "There's more good in this world than you know."

"I'm not a child!"

"No," Charles agreed, "but you're not a man, either. Not yet."

Scott lowered his head. "I know I'm in a lot of trouble."

"I haven't decided."

He was certainly in trouble, but just how much trouble remained to be seen.

"I thought you'd be mad."

"I was. I am, though I assume you must have had a very good reason. You made a deliberate choice. I'd like to know why."

"I had a reason."

"Which was?"

"I, um, the thing is, they don't let me take certain things out of the library. So I read them there. I had to go back, because… because I needed to know what happened. In _Of Mice and Men._ "

"Why can't you take out those books?"

"Because."

"'Because' is not an answer, Scott."

"'Cause I have a juvenile card."

There was nothing wrong with the books Scott read, exactly, but he was capable of more. Charles had him working through philosophical pieces by Pascal and Descartes; it seemed somewhat incongruous that Scott spent his free time reading about vowel-hating pirates, marooned Indian girls, and dogs and cats going on journeys together.

No wonder he hadn't wanted to explain. Scott wasn't an adult, but old enough that he wanted to be—old enough to be embarrassed by a child's library card.

Unsure how to address that, Charles pressed onwards, "And the note?"

"Didn't think you'd wanna listen to me when I got back. I am sorry—I know I wasn't supposed to go anywhere."

Scott had not been completely wrong. Charles didn't want to listen to him. He wanted to know what had been going through his head and why he couldn't have at least left a less concerning note, but he found himself very low on patience.

Maintaining a calm demeanor in spite of bubbling anger, he asked, "Why didn't you tell me where you were going?"

"I didn't think it mattered." Scott sounded surprised. "I thought I was grounded from everywhere."

The tea was finally cool enough to drink. Charles sipped at his drink, trying to think what to do. He was very much unprepared for dealing with a teenager, especially one who had a toddler's understanding of authority and boundaries.

As he wondered how to explain the true problem, he noticed something.

It was difficult to tell sometimes, with his glasses, but Charles had the distinct sensation of being watched. When he picked up his cup, Scott did the same—although the look of utter recoil at the taste of tea was uniquely Scott's.

Really now, did he have to be so damned endearing?

Charles felt the anger drain away. What Scott had done wasn't senseless or unthinking, he just didn't know any better.

He picked up the note. "This is unacceptable. I didn't know if you'd run away or worse. You could've been…" He wasn't sure what 'worse' was. Scott did not seem the type to throw himself off a bridge. Running away, however, seemed plausible. "If you're going to disappear, if you feel you absolutely must do so, I would very much prefer knowing where you are. Do you understand that?"

Scott nodded. The message probably had not sunk in, but Charles knew that Scott would do as he was told. This was the first time he deliberately hadn't.

"You're still grounded and no more disappearing, all right?"

Again Scott nodded. After a moment's silence, he asked, "That's it?"

"Not at all," Charles replied mildly. "If you ever do anything like that again…"

"Grounded for the rest of my natural life?" Scott guessed.

"No, no. I'll have you resurrected and re-ground you."

"Won't you be dead by then?"

"My brain will be put into a supercomputer."

"You've put a lot of thought into how long I'll be grounded."

"Yes. Indeed I have."

Scott visibly braced himself before taking another sip of tea and Charles had to smile.

"May I ask a question?"

"Certainly."

"What's a supercomputer?"

"You'd have to ask Hank for more details, but it's essentially a computer that is superior to others. Faster… and such."

Scott grinned. "Hank told you about it, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did."

"And you didn't understand him, did you?"

"Not entirely, no," Charles agreed.

"That's what it's like talking to Hank," Scott agreed, and it was clear that he both admired Hank and often did not know what he was talking about. "You wouldn't know I'd left if the power went out. If you were a supercomputer, I mean."

"I wouldn't have known if you hadn't left the note."

"Really?"

Charles nodded.

"Oh, f—!" Scott didn't say the rest of the word, but his meaning was clear.

This time Charles could not keep from laughing. Neither could Scott.


	16. Right from the Beginning

Evening melted into night, the darkness bringing a sense of peace with it. The day's heat ebbed. Its intensity made the night's heat seem like coolness—cleanness, at least, with the waning humidity.

Crickets chirped. One stopped abruptly when a cat bit into its guts, but no one noticed except the satisfied cat.

Hank wandered aimlessly through the yard. He knew that even the darkness could not completely hide his appearance, since even his silhouette looked something not exactly human, but it made him feel less conspicuous. He never felt quite invisible enough.

This was somewhat ironic, given what occupied his mind: Charles's school. He could call it a school for all mutantkind as much as he liked, but to Hank it just meant more people, which meant he had better get used to being gawked at.

He sighed and kicked at a pebble. To say no one asked his opinion would have been convenient, but they had. Both Charles and Scott wanted to know what Hank thought of the school. (And, coming from Scott: what would he do, and did he think it would be a lot of mutants, and what could other mutants do, and oh, dammit, this probably meant a lot more homework, didn't it?)

No one had asked how Hank felt, nor had he volunteered it. His opinion, yes, but not his feelings, and he preferred they not ask. What he felt was conflicted. Who could argue with a safe haven for mutant children?

Still, he did not like the idea of being _seen_. Not by strangers. Not like this.

He tilted his head back to look at the stars.

Small. That was how Hank felt. He worried about how to talk to people, especially with an appearance like his, but when he gazed up at the stars Hank felt reassuringly insignificant against the hugeness of the universe.

Not a stone's throw away (depending on who threw the stone), as Hank marveled at his molecular oneness and smallness, Charles could not keep from smiling at the overwhelming certainty that he was _doing something_. After so much thought and planning and waiting and trying… things were happening now.

"I appreciate it. I realize it's very short notice."

Even over the telephone, he heard the shrug in her voice as she said, "I am happy to help."

While Charles appreciated Ruth's willingness to help, he preferred if she would acknowledge that he was inconveniencing her. "In the future—and I'm afraid I'm very likely to have to impose upon you again—I'll try to work with you in advance."

"I said I am happy to help," Ruth retorted. "The more I think about your school, the better I like the idea. And to be involved, right from the beginning."

_The beginning._

Things were happening, but he was still crippled. Charles had always been granted a reasonable—perhaps unreasonable, when he was young—degree of independence. He did well in school, academically and behaviorally, so teachers usually by turns praised and ignored him. Neither his mother nor his stepfather was particularly emotional and both acknowledged his maturity and desire for independence.

Not that he minded, really, but it made the adjustment that much more difficult. The only tiny bright side was Scott. The only time Charles needed him in any way Scott understood was when he needed something off a high shelf.

The boy in question, meanwhile, opened Alex's bedroom door as silently as possible and slipped inside.

He felt guilty as he did. Alex didn't like anyone going in his room, particularly given Scott's lack of explanation, but… but.

There was no explanation that made sense.

He had to.

Everything was so jumbled for Scott, and sleep deprivation didn't help. The nightmares had been worse since Alex's arrival. Since the Professor said that name and triggered something in Scott's memory: _Alexander Summers._

That was the name Scott had forgotten, the name he had chased in his mind. Not Ethan. Alex. It helped him remember. His bad dreams were memories and the more he knew, the clearer he dreamed. And so the more he knew, the less he slept.

_Be a good boy, Alex._

Worse than simply being somewhere unwelcome was snooping where you weren't welcome. Even worse than snooping was not needing to snoop because you knew exactly where someone's most private possessions were kept.

The photograph and teddy bear were in a nearly-empty dresser drawer. Scott slid it open and took out the picture.

_Take care of your brother, Scott._

He barely remembered his brother—but his name had been Alex. It sounded so _right_. Alexander Summers was his little brother.

It might be a coincidence. 'Summers' wasn't an uncommon last name, nor was 'Alexander' an uncommon first name. There were probably at least a dozen guys named Alexander Summers in the world. And this one was older than Scott!

So why did he feel they had a tie to one another?

He touched the photograph gently.

"Dad…"

Scott heard his father's voice in his head. Sometimes, when he dreamed, he felt his mother's last hug. He couldn't remember either of their faces, though. Rationally, he told himself this was just a touching family photograph. He had seen them before, but the kick of familiarity he felt had something deeper in it this time.

It could be true.

His brother could be right here, Alexander Summers, baby Alex all grown up.

Why not? In this house, a furry blue man held every secret of the universe in his head. Charles could control people's minds. Scott was the closest thing they had to normal and he couldn't take off his glasses or the house would collapse.

All that considered, his little brother being several years his senior was hardly the strangest of possibilities.

Was it?

"What the hell?"

Normally Scott took a placatory approach when threatened. He could mostly scrounge up a C if he worked really hard, so at the orphanage he did a lot of his roommate's homework. He still got beaten up, but beatings for mere existence were never as vicious as those sparked by defiance.

This time there was no homework, and he had been caught in the middle of snooping, anyway.

Alex took the photo. Scott didn't fight him: it was Alex's.

"I told you to stay out of my room."

That was true. Alex had told him multiple times to stay out, but Scott just couldn't, not when Alex had that photo, and the teddy bear, and… and even though they were Alex's… Scott just wanted to be near them.

"Get out."

"Why do you hate me so much?"

"You're a little twerp who goes through my things all the time."

"I know," Scott agreed, his heart racing. Alex had stopped. Was he actually going to listen? "I know, but that's not the reason. I'm not asking you to like me but I don't think I deserve to be hated like that."

Alex had a look of fire, but he answered, "Everything changed 'cause of you. All of this… acting like we're some kind of family, this whole _school_ idea… that's because of you. _And_ you're a little twerp who goes through my things all the time."

Scott swallowed. "'Cause this was supposed to be home," he realized, and clearly Alex had very different expectations of what 'home' meant. Well, no wonder. Scott of all people understood what it was like to have nothing, not even ground under your feet.

"Stay out of my stuff."

"You still have a place here!" Then, because his words had all blurred together, "You still have a place."

He would swear Alex was listening to him. He wished he could look him in the eye—would he be able to do that, if he had tried harder, if he hadn't given up on training?

_Take care of your brother._

He hadn't, had he? But if this could work, if Alex could just listen to his explanation, Scott felt there might be some reprieve from the ache he felt, knowing he had failed his father.

"As what?" Alex asked.

Scott didn't know, exactly. He was still working on that.

"As someone who belongs."


	17. This is Inevitable

"I'm still not certain exactly how I feel about the students learning martial arts," Charles said, preparing to surround this statement in as many logical arguments as possible. He very much preferred not to be rude and there was only so much politeness possible when you were arguing a fundamental point.

Besides, this was Ruth's car. He had called her up and said he needed her help.

She in turn helped him rediscover his faith in the form of her aggressive driving and a desperate, _please don't let us crash, please don't let us crash, please don't let us crash_ mantra.

"Why not?" Ruth wondered.

"Because—" His throat tensed in panic as she jolted into the next lane over.

"Because," he tried again after a moment of smooth driving, "violence isn't the answer, violence doesn't solve anything."

" _Kus ema_!"

Charles wasn't sure what the exclamation meant, and if it was directed at him or the other drivers on the highway.

"This depends on the question, Charles."

"Starting a fight doesn't solve anything."

"No, but ignoring one does not make it go away," she replied, which he had to admit was quite true.

Charles took a moment not to argue, to simply enjoy the heat pouring through the windshield. The air conditioning made the heat somewhat lovely, as opposed to stifling.

In fact, everything was lovely. This being business did not stop him appreciating a foray into the world. It shook off the gloom and sameness of being cooped up in the house and reminded him that he was a part of something bigger. He was not unhappy with life at home, but he wasn't content, either. Out in the wide world he could touch his dreams.

"I told Scott he was safe. If I ask him to train as a fighter, how can he believe me?"

"So do not ask him," Ruth reasoned. "I can offer. But I think any of your students should learn to defend themselves."

"Our students."

She swerved into the next lane, once more reminding Charles that he was mortal. He couldn't feel his legs, but he was fairly sure they would bruise from this.

"I think it is not the same thing, to teach someone to defend himself and to say you solve your problems this way. But unless you can keep your boys apart, then yes, Scott must learn to defend himself."

 _Your boys_. Charles did feel protective of other mutants, especially of those he knew—of Sean, Raven, Alex, Hank, and Scott; even of Erik—but the possessive term felt strange. He wanted to help other mutants, that did not make him their advocate.

Did it?

Still, keeping Alex and Scott apart was a concern. Only last night they had nearly had another fight, though Scott insisted Alex had only shoved him, and anyway it was his fault for going in Alex's room, and—as usual— _don't be mad at Alex._

He only felt comfortable leaving because he trusted Hank to keep anyone from actually dying.

More importantly, "You may be right. If we teach them how, why, and when to defend themselves, that might work well. Where did you learn to fight?"

"Growing up, shortly after my… what do you call it? Mutation? Superpowers, like Batman."

Charles kept to himself that Batman did not have superpowers.

"That was when they started training me. In the kibbutz."

"When you were only a child?"

"Probably thirteen, fourteen," Ruth replied. "But more than learning how to fight, I learned how _not_ to hurt people. If I wanted any practice sparring or using moves against a real person, I needed to…"

The pause seemed not because she needed to find the words, but because it was something of an admission.

Charles realized this was only his second meeting with Ruth. Had he asked too personal a question?

"Well," she said, finally, "to not break arms so much."

Her English seemed stilted, yet she expressed her meaning clearly. He was beginning to realize there was a sense of intent to her. She said precisely what she meant to say.

"When did you start learning English?" he wondered.

"All my life! But I think more in Hebrew, now, so I am translating. I am an American by birth."

That came as a surprise to Charles, though it certainly explained Ruth's mastery of the language. She had, he thought, an Israeli way of thinking. He knew no other Israelis, but Ruth simply seemed to approach situations like no one else he knew. The way she argued, the times she laughed… in a way, Ruth was like Scott, another adaptation to a whole new language.

A sudden stop jolted him out of his thoughts. They had arrived in a rather mundane, subdivision sort of a place that looked like it maintained its veneer of perfection—that if anything bad happened here, come Hell or high water, it wouldn't show.

Ruth sat for a few moments, staring straight ahead.

"I have seen what happens when a people comes to exist where they were not," she said, finally, and seemed aware that he did not exactly understand. "You are already here, but there will be those who feel you are… the new wave of immigration, taking what is rightfully theirs. They will hate you. They will hate your students. This is inevitable. And this is why I think, even while they are children, they must learn to protect themselves. And each other."

She sounded certain but not arrogant, and spoke in a way that made him want to have a discussion about this because he respected her point of view. Or, at least, he respected her. She sounded familiar, too, though.

She sounded like Erik.

"If we look for a fight, we're going to find one."

"So we do not look," Ruth replied. "So we teach them why to fight, to _protect themselves_ , Charles. But the fight will find us."

He sighed. It was an impossible argument to win, both of them standing by their convictions and neither with any certain support for their point of view. He promised to keep Scott safe, not turn him into a soldier. And Alex? He had seen what battles did, he needn't endure the same again.

Yet Ruth made a good point, and Charles had seen that not all humans were accepting of mutants.

It was all too much to decide in just this moment. Instead he promised himself to give the matter plenty of thought later, and told Ruth, "We should go. The Ramseys are expecting us."


	18. Unnatural

"'Ey!" Scott caught Artie by the scruff of her neck. "Nice try." She had inched forward until she was nearly nose-deep in macaroni. "Mine," Scott said, like the cat understood and would listen even if she did.

He released Artie and grabbed his bowl.

She nuzzled up to him while he ate, hungry for his attention if she couldn't have his lunch. Her nose left a wet streak on his knee. When he didn't reply, she mewled to just about break his heart. Scott debated abandoning lunch in favor of Artie.

He was too hungry for that, though. He was always hungry, something he had learned to keep to himself, because the one time he mentioned it, he was told that it was "perfectly normal for a boy your age," followed by a lecture on physiology until Scott covered his ears and pleaded for mercy.

So he balanced the bowl on one leg and used his free hand to scratch Artie's ears.

"Hey, Scott." Hank dropped down beside him and included the cat with a nod and a, "D'Artagnan."

"Hey, Hank. What's a computer?"

"It's a machine for executing complex algorithmic functions, why?"

He may as well have answered in French. In fact, since Scott knew a few rude words in French, Hank may as well have answered in Swahili. He didn't know how to respond to that. Instead he once again returned to his macaroni.

"What were you trying to do there?" Hank asked, indicating a shredded t-shirt and a bottle of glue.

Scott swallowed. "Trying to fix it."

"With glue?"

He shrugged. "Alex messed it up."

"Why would he do that?"

"'Cause he's a dick."

"Yeah, fair enough. Why'd you let him?"

"I didn't—I mean—it just happened. Is that his power or something?"

"His power would've shredded _you_."

For a while, they sat in companionable silence. Scott finished most of his macaroni, then gave the bowl to Artie.

Hank snickered. "Your mouth is orange."

"I don't know what 'orange' is," Scott retorted. "But I know you're blue!"

"And you're scrawny. _And_ your mouth is orange."

If rolling his eyes did any good, Scott would have rolled his eyes, because he could think of no better retort. Instead he gave Hank a single-finger salute, which was so absurd and irrelevant they both laughed.

He had not forgotten orange, exactly. In his mind he remembered the colors, the similarities, but he couldn't picture them anymore. It had been almost a year since he saw anything besides red. He still saw differences in color, though, like after he wiped his mouth on his palm.

"Hey—have you read it?" Hank asked, changing the subject.

When Hank handed him a thousand-and-a-bit page tome, Scott expected it to be a chore. Sure, he started reading the book anyway. Hank was his friend, so Scott owed him at least an attempt, figuring it would be okay if he didn't like the book. At least he had tried, right?

Now that Hank asked, Scott gasped in an embarrassingly childish display of enthusiasm. But there was no time to worry about that now: "It ends well, right? I mean, they destroy it and everything's okay, right?"

"How far have you read?"

"Just after the Council."

"I'm not telling you the end."

"Come on," Scott wheedled, "I gotta know!"

"I can't just tell you," Hank insisted. "Besides, there's too much you don't know, it won't make sense yet."

Scott sighed. "Okay," he agreed, seeing that Hank wouldn't tell him anything. "It's just, sometimes it's really slow. There's a lot of, I mean, it's not that I don't like the poetry and stuff, but I want to know what _happens_."

Impatience, that was a weakness of his. The Professor might be frustrated by how long it took Scott to understand the most basic algebraic principles, but he only really seemed disappointed when Scott couldn't sit still long enough to learn.

The same happened when a book dropped poetry into what was essentially an adventure and a story about good and evil. He liked the poetry, but _what happened next?_

"Besides, aren't they going crazy? I mean, they just decided to go into Mordor but they're like… waiting for better weather! I'd be going crazy."

"You probably would," Hank agreed.

It was a joke, but not untrue: Scott had been all but infected with cabin fever in the winter. The fate of the world hadn't been in his hands, but he still hadn't like being cooped up during storms.

He and Artie had that in common. She finished licking the almost-not-quite-cheese-like sauce out of the bowl and ran off. Scott thought this only partly had to do with her impatient nature. She had been a stray when he found her. Friendly as she could be, she needed her independence.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, wincing as he did.

"Hank?"

"Yeah."

"Remember that time you took my blood?"

"Yeah."

"Did you ever get a chance to see…?"

Hank shook his head. "I guess it slipped my mind," he admitted. "I could look right now."

"No, that's okay—" He wanted answers, but not if it meant inconveniencing Hank. Deep down, Scott believed there would be something to prove his theory, some evidence that Alex Summers was his baby brother Alex. Somehow.

"I'm not doing a lot else," Hank pointed out. He stood and started back inside, pausing only to add, "Wash your hands if you're coming to the lab."

Scott began to ask why. Then he looked at his hands and realized they were smeared with fake cheese sauce.

Five minutes later—after washing his dishes, hands, and mouth—Scott knocked on the door to Hank's lab.

"Come in!"

Scott didn't like labs, but normally had no trouble in this one. This time he hovered by the door, hands jammed in his pockets. He had thought it so many times it became the truth, in his mind: somehow, through some magic, Alex was his little brother, all grown up, safe, _alive._ It was like a dream, the way a dream feels real to the dreamer.

If Hank knew, would that make it not true? Would that make it all disappear?

"I'd like to take another sample."

"Okay."

Hank once more disinfected a patch of skin on Scott's arm and drew blood. This time he wasted no time. As Scott fixed a band-aid over the puncture, Hank dripped blood onto a slide and slid it under his microscope.

"So?" Scott asked.

"I'm not sure," Hank replied. "It's fascinating, I've never seen this before."

He had been right! There _was_ something! A little thrill shot through Scott.

"What is it?"

Hank shook his head. "Initially I thought it must have been some sort of contamination in the original sample, but I'm seeing the same abnormalities here. There's a foreign agent affecting your cellular development."

"What that mean?"

"I'm not sure."

Scott wanted to suggest a bunch of things, hide 'delayed aging' so Hank would not know so clearly what he thought had happened. He could think of nothing else, though, and finally just asked, "Could it make me age slower?"

Hank looked back at the cells under his microscope. "I suppose theoretically. It needs further study."

Anyone else and Scott would have bolted. Even hearing Hank say that made his skin crawl. The room tilted. Scott dug his fingernails into his palm. "It's not natural, is it, Hank?"

"No. I'm almost certain it's not."

Which made it, then, _un_ natural. Made him unnatural.

"So when I was at the orphanage…"

At first, Hank seemed not to infer the question. Then he nodded. "Probably."

It happened again, the floor slipping underneath him, and everything inside Scott fell out of balance. He reached for the table to steady himself, but overshot. The edge of the table slammed into his side. The impact would have hurt anyone, but not enough to justify the ensuing yelp.

Hank was not the most socially adept of individuals. Often enough his response was to look away and fiddle with his glasses while he tried to think up something to say. He was awkward, yes, but not oblivious, and before Scott could catch his breath, Hank was steadying him.

"Scott?"

Scott still had his arms belatedly shielding the bruised area of his ribs. In a way, the pain had served a purpose. Knowledge of the 'foreign agent' thrummed in the back of his mind, but Scott's focus was on pain, and on whether or not he should tell Hank the truth.

Finally, he said, "Don't tell the Professor about this, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Hank replied, bewildered.

Scott tugged up his shirt to reveal a deep bruise.

"Oh my stars and garters."

"I don't think anything's broken, or anything," Scott tried to downplay the damage, "it just kinda hurts. Not a lot."

When it came to cellular structure or phlebotomy, Hank was about the most knowledgeable person Scott had ever met. He only knew the basics of first aid—though it was more than Scott knew, a consequence of growing up without someone to care about scrapes and bruises.

"You should probably put some ice on that."

Which was how, not five minutes later, Scott and Hank came to be standing in the kitchen, Scott alternating wincing and gasping as he pressed an ice-stuffed tea towel to his side. He didn't know if ice would help, just that slight amounts of pressure sent out jolts of pain.

"This is really the sort of thing to talk to Charles about."

Hank was an adult. At least, as far as Scott could tell, Hank was an adult, and usually he only bounced problems to the Professor when he himself had no answer. If Scott asked something about the school or evolutionary mutation, Hank would say to ask Charles. Usually, that was all.

Scott did not like the feeling that he had suddenly become too much of a problem. He especially did not like the idea of ratting on Alex.

"It's not that bad."

"You can't let Alex—"

"Who said anything about Alex?" Scott asked, so alarmed the words blurred together.

"Who needed to?"

Obviously Hank knew _he_ hadn't hit Scott. The only other people in the house were Alex and the Professor, and Charles didn't hit people.

Realizing he couldn't protect Alex from this one, Scott changed tactics, "You were the one who said to stand up to him."

"I said not to let him call you names."

Scott didn't have an answer for that. By now he had managed to set the ice pack against his bruises and the worst of the pain was numbing. "Hank…" He had nothing, really: nothing to bargain with, no arguments to make. "You said you wouldn't tell."

"Yeah, I did," Hank acknowledged, "but you should."

"It won't help anything."

Scott knew he had been a pain lately. No matter what anyone said, a part of him still believed that when he was too bothersome, when he wasn't worth keeping anymore… well, where could he go but back to the orphanage? That was what happened with boys like him, children nobody wanted because they were useless or bad.

So the last thing he wanted was to lose the closest thing to a home he had ever known, just because he whined about a few bruises. It didn't matter. He had taken much worse.

Hank had never been unwanted. He didn't understand, and that was why he insisted, "It's not okay. You need to tell Charles."

"It was my fault," Scott mumbled. Admitting that had been far down his list of things to do ever in his life, but he found himself with few options.

"It wasn't—"

"Yes it was," he insisted. "You weren't there, were you?" He didn't like the edge in his voice, but he needed Hank to shut up about this. Alex would hate him more if he told. That was, if Scott was even here to be hated.

"No," and the note of betrayal in Hank's voice made everything that much worse.

Scott lowered his head. What was he supposed to do, then? He had never been a talented liar, and now he was torn between being utterly despised by someone who might be his brother (alive, miraculous) and hurting someone he knew was his friend.

He closed his eyes, like it might shut out the world for a few minutes. "I just need time to think."

When he opened his eyes, he was alone. Scott had spent most of his life alone, so he didn't really understand why _this_ aloneness turned his blood to sludge.

He wasn't sure how he got everything so turned around. A month ago, he thought everyone more or less liked him—at least, the Professor and Hank did. But now he was just the kid who couldn't learn anything the first time around, woke them up crying out in his sleep, and apparently was a lying jerk when he was awake.

And he didn't know how to make things better.


	19. Life and Chess

Knowing the rules was only half the game of chess. The other half—that was knowing your opponent. Charles took one of Hank's pawns, knowing that put his rook in the path of Hank's bishop. He trusted Hank to take the lure, too.

Chess, at least, still made sense.

"So," Charles said.

Hank glanced at him, then back at the board.

"So," he echoed. "How's the school?"

"Coming along nicely. Have you considered having a role at all?"

From the look on his face, Hank hadn't. It was strange to see that uncertainty again. Among the three of them and even with Alex, Hank seemed more confident than ever before. The mention of the school changed that. Suddenly he remembered his blueness.

Hank shook his head.

"I'm not, I wouldn't know how to be a teacher," he said. "Besides, I'm not old enough."

"Why?" Charles reasoned. "You're an educated man."

It was somewhat manipulative. Hank was a very well-educated adult, but Charles knew his ego could be appealed to same as anyone's. The more he accepted his role as an authority figure, the more he realized a single word could sway someone's mind.

Of course, it was also true, but that was beside the point.

Hank gave him a knowing look.

"I'm not so easily influenced," he said. But there was uncertainty in his tone, too: he was starting to consider it.

Two moves and a quarter of an hour passed before Hank commented, "I couldn't control a classroom."

"It'll be a small class," Charles replied, pleased that Hank seemed to be considering it. "They're good kids."

His worry suggested he had thought about it and imagined the potential reality. If the answer really were a resounding _no_ , Hank wouldn't be thinking about logistics.

"Still…"

"I've been meeting them, you know. Extraordinary young people, and I think you'll agree." He had said those words before and hoped for a slightly less destructive outcome this time.

"What would I teach, anyway?"

"With a mind like yours, Hank, you could teach whatever you liked." He might be best educated in the sciences, but that had never stopped Hank spouting Shakespeare to prove a point.

When Hank said nothing, Charles pointed out, "You teach now."

"That's different. It's just Scott."

Charles guessed Hank meant that in terms of classroom discipline. Scott was hardly the brightest bulb in the box, but he did as he was told. He tried. Others had shorter attention spans, less interest, certainly less fear… who knew what challenges might arise? Perhaps Hank had a point. He had never signed on to be a teacher.

That wouldn't stop Charles pressing the idea.

But the mention of Scott had him thinking about the present and the knot home life had become. He sipped his tea, knowing he wouldn't be given an answer to an unspoken question. Not from Hank, anyway.

"What's been going on? This past week…"

The school seemed to pick up steam so easily now. There wouldn't be many students, but he and Ruth had visited two homes now, and spoken with two confused young people eager to understand what was happening to them. And there was Ruth, of course—sharp, vibrant Ruth with her own ideas and suggestions and no qualms about arguing.

While his professional life developed into the beginning of something truly meaningful, his personal life was a mess and a half. He didn't know what had happened! Alex spent as little time home as possible. Hank had something he didn't want to talk about, when usually getting Hank to _stop_ talking was more the trick. As for Scott, they had exchanged about five words in as many days.

Charles wasn't sure how that had happened. He left the house for a few hours and everything fell to pieces.

Hank took Charles's rook. "It's no single thing," Hank replied.

"Then tell me several things."

Charles sacrificed another piece, a pawn this time. That was simply the nature of chess: sometimes making strides towards victory meant accepting sacrifices.

Of course, the same philosophy could not be applied to real life.

"You're like his father sometimes."

"I am not." There was no real word for his relationship to Scott. They were perhaps friends, yet Charles felt responsible for Scott, for what sort of man he became.

Hank gave Charles a look he rarely saw: _I know something you don't know._ From Hank it was a matter-of-fact, only mildly amused look, but all the same rare for Charles. Having a friend always there to keep one's ego in check was an annoying sort of gift.

"Well, you can't say no to him."

"I am quite capable of saying no."

Putting on a mock-English accent, Hank quoted, "The cat's to stay outdoors only, is that understood?"

Charles raised an eyebrow. "I do not sound like that. And you know what happened with Artie."

"I know, but… you're proud of him when he succeeds, you worry when he disappears—honestly, you're concerned the other children will be mean to him at school."

All of this was true, and Charles held up his hands in mock surrender. "All right, I see your point." If assuming responsibility for a young person meant being 'like his father', then Charles supposed he was.

What else could he have done, though? He wasn't completely heartless. He couldn't turn away an orphaned mutant with no place else to go.

"Just remember that you're Alex's friend, too."

"Hank, what happened?"

Hank paused and took a deep breath. "I found a foreign agent in Scott's blood. It's like nothing I've ever seen, it's fascinating. I've been trying to determine its purpose, but obviously there's someone out there with far more advanced technology than my own."

Also obvious: Hank was none too thrilled about that. This scientific mystery seemed to have both fascinated him and scorched his pride.

"What sort of foreign agent?"

Hank shook his head. "I don't know what it does."

"What do you _think_ it does?" Knowing Hank's response—that, as he had stated, he didn't know—Charles prompted, "I realize you're uncertain, but if you had to guess."

"I don't guess with science."

"Hypothesize."

"At the moment I'm not experimenting, it's purely observation. I haven't gathered sufficient data. It doesn't seem to be hurting him in any way. I haven't had to tell _him_ to be patient."

Charles began to respond before realizing this was, in fact, a good-natured jab at him. _I haven't told the kid to be patient, but I'm telling you._ He laughed. "Fair enough. Now, what does any of this have to do with Alex?"

"Nothing."

"Yet you mentioned him."

"Well, I'm not going to tell you everything," Hank replied. "It's not mine to tell."

He was very matter-of-fact, very Hankish, so that Charles understood Hank would not change his mind. He could not really object, trusting that Hank had good reasons.

As Hank made his next move, capturing Charles's knight, he said, "I assume you'll speak with Alex or Scott next. It's just something worth keeping in mind. You're Alex's friend."

"Fair enough."

Hank had once again taken the lure. Charles's bishop captured his queen.


	20. The Piano Lesson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song mentioned in this chapter is "All Things Bright and Beautiful". It's still in use today, although the verse Charles quotes is often omitted.

As Scott was still keeping to himself, Charles waited until he heard stilted, hesitant piano music.

Scott had been picking out the same tune for weeks. That tune had finally taken shape, coming to resemble a song Charles knew well. For a while he remained just outside the door, listening to the same ten notes played over and over.

"I would've thought you had quite different taste in music," he remarked mildly. Actually, he _knew_ Scott had quite different taste in music.

Scott yanked his hands away from the piano.

"You may leave if you'd like. I'd prefer if you didn't."

In truth, it stung. No matter how many times he told himself that this had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Scott's childhood, he hated to know that he was a source of fear. He couldn't hurt anyone, let alone a child.

All right, he had punched Erik a few times, but those were extreme circumstances.

Finally, Scott mumbled, "I don't really know it."

"I'm sorry?"

"I, uh… I don't… know the song. I hear it, sometimes, but when I think I can't find it…" He shook his head. "It sounds crazy."

It did sound strange, but strange, in Charles's experience, was often just a part of life. He indicated the piano. "May I?"

"Of course. Oh, right. Um." Scott moved the piano bench and Charles maneuvered over to play.

He knew the song, but had not actually played it in years. He thought a few seconds before touching the keys. Although recognizable as the plodding thing Scott picked out, the song was different with the proper timing, with each note leading smoothly into the next.

Both waited for the silence to settle. Then Scott asked, "What is it?"

"It's a hymn."

Charles heard him roll his eyes.

He played the song once more. " _All things bright and beautiful/all creatures great and small/all things wise and wonderful…_ " Charles liked the song. It was rather lovely, really—but a few passing remarks were enough that he knew Scott didn't care for religion. So he stopped before the end of the verse.

"…the Lord God made them all."

So much for stopping early.

Scott had his shoulders curled and his head bowed. It was almost like watching someone retreat into his own mind. "My mother taught me. I think."

Charles had never before heard those words from him.

"Scott—"

Scott turned back to the keyboard. Because he had mostly moved the piano bench out of the way, the song was higher than intended and slower with Scott's limited ability.

"This is the first note—that's D," Charles said, well aware that the notes meant little. Scott's hands remembered the keys. His mind didn't. "Then B…"

Scott had the wrong notes, not just the wrong pitch. He played a key two away, an E. Luckily musical keys were very much unlike the keys on a typewriter and the song sounded basically recognizable.

"C…"

They shuffled almost laboriously through the song, but the vaguely funereal tempo seemed unimportant. Scott managed to follow along almost accurately, only bungling every fourth or fifth note. Perhaps he truly did not know the song consciously, but some part of him recognized it, because he frowned when it changed.

"That's not it."

"The verses are different to the chorus. It's quite a long song, actually, there are seven verses all told."

"How do they go?"

Suspecting Scott meant the words, Charles played the remaining notes.

"I don't imagine you would like the lyrics," he warned. "It's a song of praise, but that doesn't stop the music being beautiful." He did not blame Scott for his aversion to religion and had no desire to defend the hymn's claim that 'God made them high and lowly/and ordered their estate'.

Scott once explained why religion bothered him so much. A loving, all-knowing God was a difficult concept to reconcile with his pain-riddled life in the orphanage. It made him feel, he had said, like he deserved it.

So Charles changed the subject to, "Will you tell me what's been bothering you?"

"It's nothing."

"It's _not_ nothing. Am I going to have to read your mind?"

"You won't believe me."

"Will you tell me the truth?"

He nodded.

"Then I'll believe you."

Scott was quiet a moment. Charles waited, trusting him to speak when he was ready—and after a minute or so, Scott began, "Before my father died, he told me to look after my little brother. I promised I would, and that's the last thing I said to him."

Those few sentences held a huge amount of information and a huge amount of pain, also. Scott had never mentioned his family. Charles knew only that his parents were dead. He had not considered that Scott might have relatives, a sibling... that was a pain he knew too well. Losing a sibling, nothing left but questions, that was unspeakably terrible.

"That's what you wanted to forget," he realized. "Is that what you dream?"

Scott nodded. "Sometimes. Or it's… the orphanage, but… but I can still do something for my brother."

"If he's alive—"

"He is."

Gently, trying not to promise too much, Charles said, "I can look for him."

And he would look, but there were so many things he could not promise. Cerebro was powerful, but there were billions of people in the world, and despite his claim Scott's brother might not even be alive.

"I know where he is."

"Do you?"

It was impossible to say what Scott focused on, with his glasses, but Charles had the distinct impression he was being scrutinized. "You promised to believe me."

Charles nodded. "I do believe you."

"I don't think I'm fifteen."

He thought of their conversation about Scott's lack of birthday and asked, "Have you decided you're sixteen now?"

Scott shook his head. "I'm… um… I'm in my mid-twenties."

"Of course you're not—"

"You promised."

The concept was so outlandish, Charles had assumed Scott was joking. He had not thought this could be serious, but Scott sounded genuinely hurt. "All right," he said. "But you look fifteen." He acted fifteen, too. He had the confused, emotional demeanor of a teenager.

"I know," Scott agreed. "Hank looked at my blood. He said… he said there's something…"

Seeing Scott struggle to explain the science he didn't understand, "Yes, I know. He told me there was an abnormality."

"Here's where it gets weird."

It wasn't weird yet? Charles liked to think he had lived a rather unorthodox life, what with his shape-shifting sister and involvement in averting a nuclear war, but even he found a twenty-something-year-old man in a fifteen-year-old boy's body out of the ordinary.

He kept that to himself.

"My brother… I-I think he's Alex."

"What?"

"I know it's a coincidence, I know, but he's the right age and he has the same name as my brother." After that, Scott started speaking more quickly, trying to convince them both: "And he has my picture, only he thinks it's him, and, and my bear, it must've been when I was in the hospital."

The whole thing was rather far-fetched. Charles believed much of what Scott had said. He believed Scott had a brother who he had promised to protect, and maybe his brother had been named Alex, but how rare a name was Alex Summers? And Alex was only 'the right age' if Scott was ten years older than he appeared.

"You don't believe me."

He sounded awfully hurt for someone suggesting such a wild theory.

"I don't know," Charles admitted. Knowing it would hurt Scott, he told the truth. Lying would hurt him more. "I want to believe you. I'm afraid that's the best I can do at the moment."

Scott sighed. "But I'm so sure that he's my brother! Even if he is a jerk. I don't care about what he did."

 _What he did._ Sometimes Charles could almost forget where he had met Alex. Everything that led to his arrest had been accidental, problems caused by his ability and lack of control. He wasn't a bad person.

So who had mentioned that to Scott?

Guessing it was the one person in the house who leaked like an information sieve, Charles said, "It's worth keeping in mind, Alex is not a criminal. Not really."

"What?"

"Like you, he needed to learn to control his ability. That's what landed him in prison, not—"

" _In prison_?"

Oh, dear.

"I thought Hank told you."

Scott shook his head.

For a moment, Charles struggled with an overwhelming thought: Scott needed a haircut. He really did. How long was this shaggy mop growing out?

 _All right, Hank,_ Charles thought wryly, _you were right on that count._

"But then what did you mean, 'what he did'."

"I thought Hank told you!" Scott echoed. "Anyway, it doesn't matter."

The way he said it made quite clear that it _did_ matter. Scott just didn't want to talk about it—which, naturally, meant something important had happened.

Charles decided he'd had enough. Enough secrets, enough personal agendas, enough of men like Alex and Scott who all holed up inside themselves and broke down piece by piece! So rather than approach this gently, he asked, "Didn't I ground you the last time you lied to me?"

"I thought you grounded me for breaking the door."

"Why would I punish you for something you didn't do?"

The statement took a moment to sink in as Scott realized that he had never fooled Charles about the laundry room door incident.

"Well?"

Scott hesitated. He opened his mouth, closed it, tried again—then looked away. He carefully lifted his t-shirt to show a purple bruise over his ribs.

"Please don't be mad. It really doesn't matter, I've taken worse."

"I'm not mad at you, Scott." Charles doubted Scott would understand the difference between being mad and being frustrated. And Scott _was_ frustrating. He was a caring, good-hearted person, but he was also a broken child who needed a mother—and that was something he would never have.

No wonder he wanted so badly to believe Alex was his family.

Understanding that Scott needed his parents didn't actually make Charles a parent, whatever Hank said. A parent would know what to do, how to help him, and Charles simply didn't. So Scott was frustrating, but he would only hear the criticism in that statement.

Scott shook his head. "It's okay if you're mad at me. I lied, right? Like you said. Just… please don't be mad at Alex. It's not his fault."


	21. Alexander Summers has a Teddy Bear

Alexander Summers was not a morning person. It's not that he was lazy, and if he needed to be up and about before some decent hour of the morning (after ten; eleven-thirty on weekends) he could be. He just liked his sleep.

Lately he also liked getting out of the house before anyone noticed him. Rather—he liked getting out of the house before the kid noticed him.

Hank didn't bother him. They were not friends, but exchanged pleasant enough greetings and then went their own ways, neither having much to say to the other. It was nothing against Hank, either. Alex found him dry and a bit boring, but didn't dislike him.

As for Charles, Alex still felt a little awkward around him. Who wouldn't? Here was the same person who had found him in an isolation cell, and encouraged him to use his destructive mutant ability, and raced Hank around the house countless times. (For days Alex and Sean had an ongoing bet over whether or not Hank would use his power to win.)

And now Charles was a cripple. How was Alex supposed to react to that? How was anyone? So he felt uncomfortable, yeah, but those feelings evaporated easily with a few words of conversation. Being in a wheelchair hadn't made him any less Charles.

The problem wasn't Hank and it certainly wasn't Charles. The problem was fifteen years old and wouldn't just leave him the hell alone even though he had been quite clear about that. As Alex hurried out the front door, he sighed in relief.

Brat avoided.

"Alex, wait."

He didn't wait.

"Alex!"

Alex knew Scott was running to catch up, from the sound of his footsteps. He could probably outrun a scrawny kid with a bruise making it hard to take deep breaths, but Alex's pride wouldn't let him run away. Instead he maintained his pace until the kid caught up.

Alex sighed, in case his frustration had gone unnoticed. "What do you want, Annie?"

Last time he used that name, Scott was so angry he took a swing at Alex. That was why Alex used it again.

"Where do you go every day?" Scott wondered.

"To screw your mom."

"Ew."

They reached the end of the driveway. Alex had half hoped Scott wouldn't leave, but both of them turned toward town. "How far are you following me? Aren't you grounded?"

"I…" Scott glanced around. Apparently, yes, he was still grounded. And worried about it.

Alex scoffed.

"Look, I just wanted to tell you the Professor knows you hit me."

"I don't care."

Actually, he did care. Alex cared more about Charles's opinion than just about anyone else's, but he was not going to let on to Scott that he was a bit concerned. How surprised could Charles be, though? He knew what Alex was. He knew what Scott was. He had seen them punching each other that day with Ruth…

He would probably want to do something, say something, and Alex found himself already preparing to look really sorry.

"I didn't mean to tell him."

"I don't care."

What was it about this kid that he wanted so badly for Alex to like him? And why was he so bad at that? His idea of friendship seemed to be meddling in other people's lives. If he hadn't pushed so hard and been such a bother, Alex would probably still consider him a bit of a sissy, but he wouldn't hate him.

He increased his pace. Scott wasn't much shorter than Alex, but he was cardboard-kneed and had the coordination of a drunk skunk. He kept up at an awkward trot.

"Look, I know I had it coming to me, okay? I know I shouldn't've been looking at your stuff, I tried to explain—"

"I don't wanna hear it!"

Scott stayed quiet a while, except the "Ah!" when he tripped over his own feet. Then, "Why does your teddy bear—"

Alex growled.

"—say S.S. on its feet?"

"Alex Summers," he explained. "Remember?" He had not forgotten Scott's fascination with his name. He didn't particularly understand it, but he didn't care, either.

"So shouldn't it say A.S.?"

"Summer _s_. Plural."

Strange that he should ask about that, since Alex himself did not remember deciding to write those letters on the teddy bear. Rather than remembering writing it, he remembered trying to remember.

"Alex—"

"It can wait, okay?" he asked. "Whatever, just… later. I don't want to talk to you. Go home."

Alex carried on and, after a moment, began to smile: he couldn't hear any footsteps following him.

"Your name is Alexander Cole Summers!"

Alex turned. Scott stood at the side of the road, watching Alex but making no move to approach.

"What?"

"Alexander Cole. Cole like Christmas," Scott said, "even though you were born in July."

"Hank told you that."

"In Honolulu," Scott continued. "Did Hank know that? You were born in Honolulu. But you lived in Anchorage until your parents died in a plane crash—"

"How do you know that?"

"—their names were Christopher and Katherine Summers—"

"How do you know!"

"Because I know you."

Alex strode back, close enough to ask Scott, low and threatening, "How the hell do you know about me?"

Something besides the breeze had started sending shivers down his spine. Alex wasn't one to share personal information. He had mentioned his birthday when Raven asked—you didn't say no to Raven. And his middle name because it wasn't as bad as Hank's. No one else knew about Honolulu, though. No one knew about his parents. How did this kid?

"I think you're my brother," Scott almost whispered. Alex's intimidation had worked.

"I'm not your brother."

"I think—"

"Shut up!" It was all Alex could think to say. He might have Scott physically intimidated, but Scott had Alex deeply frightened. How did anyone, let alone a kid, find out that sort of personal information?

"Alex—"

"I am not your brother. I have parents. I have a sister." He and Haley weren't the closest of siblings, but she was his sister, and he loved her. "I'm sorry you got no family, Annie," both a jab and a reminder, "but back off'a me. If I could pick my family I wouldn't pick you."

Alex knew that was low. The kid couldn't help being an orphan and under normal circumstances, Alex did not tease quite so cruelly.

But Scott was an annoyance and a snoop and he knew things he had no business knowing. Was he a telepath, like Charles? One who went digging in other people’s minds, who took information that was not his to take?

Alex couldn't even remember Honolulu, he just knew it from his birth certificate. Hearing something that was only a fact in his head spoken by someone who was an acquaintance at best touched a nerve.

Alex wanted to hurt Scott to make him keep to himself.

Apparently it worked, because when Alex walked away, nobody followed.


	22. The Process of Active Learning

Charles had always been an early riser. He wanted to get up and get on with the day! Only once in the past year could he recall making a habit of lying in and, considering the extenuating circumstance of paraplegia, he felt that could be forgiven.

So he had been awake and reading for some time.

If he was going to run a school, he needed to know more about education than being a student provided. There had been a lot of rote memorization when he was young, and that wouldn't work well for someone like Scott.

Ceding to others' superior knowledge, Charles found himself slogging through _The Process of Active Learning._ It actually had rather good ideas, in his opinion, and with so few students he might just have the perfect environment to test theories of collaborative education.

Interesting as the content of the report was, its style left a lot to be desired. Charles propped his head on his hand. Somehow since his graduation, he had forgotten how to enjoy tedium.

A soft tap at the door distracted him.

Charles sighed. He was trying to _work_. With everything going on lately, he found so little time! Between recruitment, educating Scott, and trying to keep him and Alex from brutalizing each other, school administration issues were too often set on the back burner.

The interruption annoyed him.

"This had better be important!"

No one replied. Charles turned back to the report, then he realized who would knock so softly.

 _'It's all right, Scott,'_ Charles said in his mind. _'I'm not angry.'_

Scott's mind was difficult to read sometimes, a confused blur of thoughts and emotions, locked doors and dark patches. He had definitely heard, though. He was upset about something with Alex, which Charles guessed he would need to deal with later, and there was something Scott wanted kept private and needed careful attention to avoid.

Keeping the frustration from his thoughts, Charles asked, ' _What do you need?'_

"I… um… a-am I still grounded?" Scott asked aloud. Communicating through thought required a degree of focus he—and most teenagers—did not have.

One idea clarified through the haze of uncertainty, pain, anger and hormones.

Honestly, every time Charles was annoyed, that little monster had to go and do something utterly endearing!

_'You're free to go wherever you like—enjoy the library.'_

"Thanks, Professor."

Charles returned to the report.

Another concern was educational levels, though he knew he would need to address that in his own way. The school was meant to be a safe place for mutants, but it was also a place for them to learn they were not alone. Their varying grade levels made independent study seem like a great idea.

The problem with independent study, though, was that it was independent, not exactly conducive to community-building. Everyone had trained independently before, but they all became close after losing Angel and Darwin.

He did not wholly trust young people with independent study, either. He knew _he_ would have completed all assignments, at that age, but Raven for example would have certainly slacked off. Scott was a good boy, but he needed a nudge in the right direction, now and again. If he didn't understand he would take a crack at it, eventually grow frustrated and give up.

He was still mulling it over when the telephone rang.

"Hello, Charles Xavier speaking."

"Hi, Charles."

"Oh, hello, Ruth. Is something on your mind?"

Some minds were easier to read than others. Scott's was often jumbled and emotional. Hank thought science beyond Charles's comprehension and leapt from one idea to the next faster than he could follow. Charles would only understand part of their thoughts. Ruth thought in the cadences of another language—usually in another language entirely! As a result, he did not know how her mind worked.

It was somewhat frustrating for Charles, who was accustomed to his little social shortcuts.

"When last we spoke, we discussed my moving in, for the school."

"Yes, of course, I remember."

They had needed to decide on a date the school would open. The most they had said about Ruth moving in was a brief conversation: he extended the offer, she said she would think about it but she might decide to live in the town.

 _I do not know that I want to live in your house_ , she had replied. He couldn't read her thoughts, but she rarely hesitated to share them.

"The offer is still good?" she wanted to know.

"Yes. You've changed your mind?" he asked.

"No, I have had a fight with my landlord," she replied, nothing if not honest.

Charles laughed. Well wasn't that Ruth in a nutshell! "What happened?"

"I just told you," Ruth replied. "Not very surprised, are you?"

"Well, you can be a very blunt woman," Charles admitted. He couldn't dodge the question, only hoped not to cause too much offense.

Luckily, Ruth laughed. "The truth sets us free, Charles. Don't you know that? Actually, very good advice, you should think on it yourself."

"I do try to be an honest person."

"Yes," she agreed, "but there is a difference between not lying and speaking the truth."

Charles wasn't sure what to say to that. There was plenty he saw no need to give voice. Rather than point out that there were things people don't say, he asked, "When would you like to move in?"

"A little over a week, if this is convenient for you."

It was, mostly because Charles had little in his life besides the school. He worried some about how Scott and Hank would react to Ruth, but they would have to get used to her sooner or later.

"That's fine. It must have been quite the fight," he commented.

For some, maybe most, having a fight with one's landlord and facing swift eviction would have been upsetting. Ruth laughed it off. "I will tell you the story sometime," she promised.

"I look forward to it." Charles glanced at the still-open report on his desk. Judging by the sunlight, it had been over an hour since Scott left for the library, and Charles had made less progress than he would like. "Do you have a moment to talk?"

"Yes."

"I've been thinking about how to best run the school…"

The conversation with Ruth was invigorating. She brought her own ideas, agreed with or poked holes in Charles's. Speaking an idea aloud to another made it seem less silly somehow. It had been given voice; it would happen.

He was in much better spirits when he hung up the phone.

Before he had the chance to write out notes from this conversation, another jangled ring broke into his thoughts. "Hello, Charles Xavier speaking."

"Professor?"

"Hello, Scott. Is everything all right?"

'Nervous' wasn't new for Scott, so Charles did not assume anything had gone wrong. He scrawled a few important points from his conversation with Ruth before Scott managed a, "Yes. It's, um, there's something I need to do. And it—I—it's important…" Scott sighed audibly, then tried again, "I know I've been a pain lately and I know it's asking a lot for you to trust me."

That was not precisely how Charles would have phrased it, but he couldn't pretend not to know what Scott meant. "It's not that I don't trust you," he explained, "it's that I'm responsible for you. Where are you?"

"The library. I mean, right now, the library, but I… there's something I…"

Charles suppressed the urge to sigh or hurl the telephone across the room. "What is it you want to do?" he asked.

"I don't wanna say in case it doesn't work."

"Is it in any way illegal, unethical, or dangerous?"

"No." Then, as an afterthought, "It's presumptuous."

"That's fine, then. Be back by evening."

"Definitely. I will."

"Thank you for calling, Scott, that was the right way to handle the situation. And you'll be explaining this eventually, yes?" After a moment's silence, he asked, "Are you nodding?"

"Um. Yeah, I was."

“Yes,” Charles corrected. Was he the only person left in the world with proper diction?

“Yes,” Scott echoed.

"Right, I'll see you this evening."

Charles spent a moment on pure frustration after that. He still felt that starting a school was a good idea, that mutant children deserved a place to be safe and learn to use their gifts. He thought he would be happy dedicating himself to such a school, too. It was just the unexpected administrative tasks getting to him.

And all the interruptions weren't helping! Honestly, Scott was…

Charles sighed. Scott was doing exactly as he'd been told by not disappearing without a word. Starting a school and keeping an eye on a teenager were both time-consuming tasks—and Hank might well have been right.

Not that Charles planned to tell him so.

He nearly swore when the telephone rang again.

"Honestly, I am _very_ busy!" he snapped.

Unconcerned, the telephone gave another ring, and Charles answered it with a very polite, "Hello, Charles Xavier speaking."

When he heard the voice on the line, Charles all but laughed out loud.

He wished he had use of his legs just so he could kick himself.


	23. Only the Little Things

Scott didn't have the right words for what he felt after watching Alex walk away. _Hopeless_ was a good word. _Broken_ was another, though it scared him. Perhaps closest of all was _abandoned_ , which was ridiculous, because that by definition was close to nothing.

All of the no-name feelings bounced around inside him, jumbled and crashed until they grew into a big mass of anger and a need to move.

He hadn't really meant what happened when he grabbed the knife.

There was only one road into town. Staying on the bike, he would easily overtake Alex. Scott rode until he was out of sight of the house. ( _House_ was another inadequate word.) Then he walked. It would take a while, but that was okay. He had no place to be.

Sooner or later he would need to go back, see Alex again, or the Professor. He had been so sure about Alex as his brother, Scott had not thought about keeping his mouth shut. At least Hank didn't know, so one person might not think he was totally crazy.

Or pathetic.

Scott shook his head. How desperate was he that he thought having the same last name made them brothers? He couldn't even remember his little brother's name. Alexander _sounded_ right, so right he could almost remember his mother's voice—" _This is Alexander. This is your little brother."_

There was no evidence for any of it. So what if Alex's bear had an S on either foot and there was something wrong with Scott's blood? So what any of it!

Mae, the librarian, smiled when she saw him. Her expression quickly shifted to one of concern. "Oh, Scott, look at you! What's happened?"

He bit his lip. Strangely, he and Mae had not really talked about much of real life. Or rather, they had talked about everything of real life. They shared books, so that was what they discussed. And morals and ethics, life and death—only the little things.

"I…"

But they had never discussed mutants. Far as he knew, mutation wasn't known, exactly. It was seen as a bit of a conspiracy theory in some circles, but the Professor said that mostly the government didn't want word getting out.

"I…"

And every so often, he knew she wanted to recommend a grown-up book, because she reminded him to ask his parents to sign the forms. He wouldn't mind an adult library card.

What had happened? Nothing, really. Scott made an ass of himself. Really, though, he was no worse off than he had been a few weeks ago. The Professor seemed to have forgiven him for lying and being a general pain, and Alex… well, a few weeks back, they had never met.

So why was he so bothered?

He ran away. It was far from the proudest moment of Scott's life and it was also far from the worst, but nonetheless embarrassing. He bolted over to the corner with the children's books.

While he browsed, he felt Mae watching him. She didn't say anything and neither did he. The quiet of the library, the sound of the clock and the smell of old books, slowly overcame Scott. He felt a soft hue of comfort in the library. Safety, really, the sort that allowed him to risk excitement.

New books!

The school, Alex, and the situation with his blood all seemed unimportant now. They were easily manageable because they were not vital. Nothing shy of words and oxygen was really _necessary_ , not in the short term.

It wasn't until Scott slid his books across the counter that he managed to talk. "D'you think you can lose something you never had?"

Mae looked at him for a moment and Scott, silently, willed her to understand.

She was the only person he really trusted with this. Hank was his friend the Professor was whatever you called someone who looked after you but wasn't family, and although Scott believed they would both help him if he needed help, they were… _guys_. You didn't talk emotions with guys, even emotions so strong you didn't know what to do with them.

It really was that simple. The elusive factor that made Scott trust Mae in ways he did not trust Hank and the Professor: Mae was a woman.

"I think," she said, after a moment, "that what you've lost is hope."

Although this felt piercingly, painfully true, Scott smiled. _She understood._ This one bright moment shone with inexplicable brilliance. He had lost his hope. How wonderful to have those words! He could almost laugh.

Because he saw another question coming, something else personal he preferred to ignore, he said, "A friend lent me a book while I was grounded."

Mae knew about that. When he came in to read _Of Mice and Men_ , she asked why he didn't check out any new books. Somehow the story just spilled out: he was grounded, he wasn't supposed to be here at all, but he had to know what happened. Mae had laughed at that and said he was following 'the spirit of the law, if not the letter'.

"A good one?" she wondered.

He nodded. "Have you read _The Lord of the Rings_?"

"That's a very special book."

"You say that about all the books."

"It's true about all the books. The most important words in the world are written down in some dusty old book and you know it."

Normally, Scott would smile and say that yes, he did. Today he said, "Maybe some words are more important."

"Like what words?" Mae asked.

Like _family_.

Like _certainty_.

Like _love_.

He shrugged, forced a smile, and said, "Thanks, Mae."

He headed for the door, still zipping up his backpack around the newly borrowed library books.

"Scott." At the sound of his name, he paused. "J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about magical things without condescension. That was what made his work so special. He wrote that a story need not be realistic to be deeply meaningful, and that means wonderful things for fiction."

As he started for the road out of town, Scott turned those ideas over in his head. Did that make it okay, he wondered, to imagine he was biking to Mordor? The story did have a way of making him feel lighter, the whole world more meaningful. It filled his mind as air fills lungs.

He wasn't riding his bike alone down Sycamore Lane. He was walking the footsteps of Nine-Fingered Frodo and Samwise the Brave, fleeing vicious Uruk-Hai…

Of course he didn't forget that he wasn't truly a courageous adventurer but an awkward teenager. One day quite soon he would need to talk to people his own age and not mention that he liked to pretend he was on a grand quest, even though Mae said it was okay.

It wasn't just people his own age! Alex would have no end of fun with this, if he knew.

Well, Scott had no intention of telling anyone, especially Alex. He would—

Scott stopped so suddenly he nearly went over the handlebars. _Alex._ He wheeled the bike around and started back in the opposite direction. Sure, his thoughts often focused on Alex, his not-brother, but it was no coincidence he had thought of Alex just then.

A block and a half back, Scott peered through the window of the drug store. He stood across the street, hoping not to be noticed.

So this was where Alex disappeared to so often. That he had found a part-time job did not surprise Scott, not given Alex's show of independence and overall disinterest in the school, but this was beneath him. It was the sort of thing students did, working towards something better.

_If I could pick my family, I wouldn't pick you._

All the name-calling and joking had worn at Scott. He still couldn't take a full breath with his side bruised up. A part of him remembered all that and felt a twinge of satisfaction at Alex's menial job, his nothing-future. But most of Scott felt bad for him.

He started back toward home. Mentioning this to Alex, to anyone, would be a big mistake. There was a reason Alex hadn't said anything, and whatever it was, spilling secrets was not Scott's business. Besides, he was half afraid of what Alex would do—and secretly just a little bit pleased. Alex was mean. And his job was pathetic.

Except…

Hadn't he promised to look after his brother? It was the last thing his father asked of him, the last thing he thought before dying was that Alex needed protecting.

But, Scott reminded himself, this Alex wasn't his brother, so he owed Alex nothing.

This Alex was just some jerk who happened to also be a mutant.

This Alex was a bully.

Those reasons aside, Scott found himself heading not toward home, but back to the library. Alex might be a jerk and a bully who may have cracked one of his ribs (Hank said no, but it was still hard to breathe sometimes), but… _but._ But he was so unhappy, and Scott knew someone had done the same thing for him.

It might be the only reason he was still alive. When he thought he had to return to the orphanage, he remembered the sense of utter despair, the overwhelming certainty that his life was finished. He didn't have it in him to keep fighting—but someone helped him then, when he needed it. And he wasn't sure he had deserved it then, either.

"Mae?"

"Welcome back."

Scott swallowed. "Mae… I have this friend, and I need to help him."


	24. A Scurry of Chipmunks

"Did she really beat up Alex?"

Hank seemed to focus on the wrong thing. Alex's look of indignation only encouraged him.

"She didn't beat him up," Charles replied, not masking his distaste for the term, "she…"

He glanced between the two of them. The situation between Alex and Scott was rocky, but while both insisted Scott had thrown the first punch that day, Charles still blamed Alex.

He hesitated over what to say, all too aware of Alex's attention on him.

"She choked me."

"She," what had Ruth called it?, "tapped his trachea."

"Like I said."

Charles raised an eyebrow. As Ruth promised, Alex had made a full and speedy recovery. He had not considered, in suggesting she move in, that Alex might still take issue with her.

Over the past months—nearly a year now—the juxtaposition of pizza slices and real plates had become less and less strange. Alex voluntarily having a meal with them was somewhat rarer. That was likely due to Scott's absence. Nevertheless…

"Ruth doesn't know you. Her reaction was understandable."

In disbelief, Alex argued, "He started it!"

"I didn't ask who started it."

"When did you say she's moving in?" Hank asked.

"About a week from now. I think you'll like her, Hank."

"Does she know I look like… this?"

"I did try to mention it."

"Try?" Alex asked.

It was a touch embarrassing for Charles: "On reflection, I believe she misinterpreted my use of the word 'blue'."

Alex began to laugh. A moment later, Hank joined him.

"She thinks Hank's depressed?"

Charles shrugged helplessly, enjoying the atmosphere more than the joke.

The front door opened and shut audibly. Alex's jaw clenched, which somewhat dampened Charles's relief that Scott had managed to get himself home. (Maybe, just maybe, he trusted Scott a tad less than he let on.) He wanted to say something, but as his earlier attempt had only annoyed Alex, Charles kept his mouth shut.

Scott was withdrawn lately, but he was a teenage boy. Nothing influenced him quite so much as hunger. It wasn't long before he took a seat and grabbed a slice of pizza. In spite of the heat, he wore a sweatshirt, the hood pulled up like he wanted to avoid notice and didn't know how.

Charles glanced at Hank, who shrugged.

"'mIgrounded?"

"I beg your pardon?"

Scott gulped his water and asked, more clearly, "Am I grounded?"

"No." He still seemed lost on the point of being grounded.

"So…" Clarification required: "I'm not in trouble?"

Charles suppressed a sigh, and because he had hesitated to answer, Hank volunteered, "Neep."

Both Hank and Scott found this hilarious.

"All right, what is 'neep'?" Charles asked. It seemed like he heard that word every other day and he had no idea to what it referred.

For a moment, no one answered. Scott's head remained buried in his hood, but he was clearly looking away. It was Hank who explained, "It's the sound a chipmunk makes."

Apparently that was even more hilarious.

"Now you're a chipmunk?"

Charles gave up. He had no idea what they were talking about, but Hank and Scott both laughed themselves breathless. Apparently being blue did not stop a person going red in the face.

"All right. Fine. I'm not speaking to either of you until you're no longer chipmunks."

After a few minutes, it seemed Scott and Hank were themselves again—then they glanced at one another and once more dissolved into laughter like a couple of kids. By the time they had both stopped, Scott wheezed and Hank wiped tears from his eyes.

"What's with the sweater?" Alex asked.

Charles sighed. Was it so much to ask for Alex and Scott to keep peace with one another for five minutes—to _ignore_ one another for five minutes?

"'s just a sweater," Scott mumbled.

"In August. Isn't St. Mary's a girls' school?" Alex prodded, referring to the school crest. Since most of Scott's clothes came from the secondhand store, a girls' school crest didn't really mean much.

"I don't know," Scott admitted, looking down like he was noticing the crest for the first time. "I borrowed it from a friend."

"You have friends now?"

"Yes, I beat you to that."

"Both of you, stop it."

Charles had the distinct impression that neither of them even knew he had spoken.

"Nice one, orphan boy."

"Scott, don't—"

"I never liked you," Scott retorted.

" _Nobody_ ever liked you," Alex said. No matter how hard Scott tried, he didn't have Alex's experience bandying insults, even standing up for himself. This was a match he couldn't win.

"How's the drug store?"

Alex's eyes narrowed.

Seeing where this was going, Charles warned, "Alex, this would be a wonderful time to stop before you say something you regret."

He didn't. Instead, he said, "Isn't that what orphanages are for, the kids no one wants?"

Scott didn't say a word. He didn't need to. He had gone very still.

"Alex, don't do this."

"They knew, didn't they? That there's something wrong with you. You ever wonder where you'd be if Charles didn't take pity on you? If you're actually an orphan or you got parents who couldn't stand the sight of you?"

"Alex—"

Charles had never seen Scott under that sort of pressure before, but hadn't thought to worry. Oh, he worried about Scott—that was a terrible thing to say to anyone, let alone an orphan—but he expected Scott to either walk away or just sit there and take whatever Alex wanted to say.

Instead, Scott replied by hurling a fork at Alex, along with, "Fuck you!"

The awkwardness of the projectile and overwhelming force of Scott's anger combined to make it fly wide, not even clipping Alex. Scott was reaching for something, anything, else to throw.

Alex laughed and Scott's hand went to his glasses.

"Scott Matthew Summers!"

Middle names always carried such weight. He was only Charles Francis Xavier at graduations or that time he swiped the key to his stepfather's liquor cabinet. A combination of the middle name card and Charles' tone made Scott freeze.

"You do not use your powers for revenge. Ever. This has gone on for long enough," he continued. "I don't know what's gotten into you—both of you—you're better than this. Whatever the cause, the fighting ends now. I don't care whose fault it is. I don't care who started it."

He didn't know that he had ever heard his own voice sound so severe. He had never needed to, and never felt this sort of frustration. It tangled his thoughts.

The boys sat quietly. Alex stared at the table, his jaw set in defiance. Scott slouched, trying to disappear into his sweatshirt. Neither of them seemed to have anything to say for themselves. Meanwhile, Hank looked even less sure than either of the Summerses.

Charles looked from one to the other and realized that, in this situation, he needed to be an adult. He needed to be _the_ adult, because no one else was volunteering.

Before he could think of what to say, Scott stood and bolted out of the room. Alex gave him a filthy look and muttered an obscenity.

"For pity's sake, Alex, he's a child."

"That doesn't mean he can go through other people's things!"

"No, it certainly doesn't," Charles agreed, "and I'll have a talk with him about that. It won't happen again. That's no excuse for cruelty."

"Has he told you that he's convinced we're brothers?"

After a brief hesitation, Charles nodded. Scott _had_ mentioned it, after all, and apparently not been discouraged.

"It would explain his immunity," Hank offered. Charles and Alex turned to him, both suddenly remembering that he was there. Hank cleared his throat. "Unless someone else is immune to your ability."

"We can't possibly know that Scott is immune to Alex's ability," Charles replied. Then he realized Hank's implication: the only way to know that was if Scott had been in the way of Alex's potentially deadly energy blasts.

"Thanks, Hank. I probably didn't hit him, anyway."

Hank shook his head. "You shredded his t-shirt."

"Alex…" Charles was at a loss. Alex hadn't been exhibiting the best judgment lately, but this was a new low.

Alex responded with an accusation of his own: "Then who the hell thought it was okay to tell him personal information about me? I don't even know this guy!" No one responded. Charles and Hank glanced at one another. "What? What is it?"

Charles waited a moment, but he was still the grown up. "Neither of us has given Scott any personal information about you."

"So… the kid's psychic, like you? He knows where I was born, he knows about my parents."

"He could be your brother," Hank suggested.

Alex glowered at him. Hank, very pointedly, reached over and took another slice of pizza.

Charles sighed. "Oh, that's enough, both of you. Alex and Scott are not brothers."

Hank asked the obvious question: "Why not?"

He might have been asking, Charles thought, as a scientist. Scientists open their minds to new ideas, experiment and explore and require evidence to accept conclusions. There was no actual proof that Scott and Alex were not brothers.

Of course they weren't. 'Summers' was scarcely an uncommon family name.

But Hank's point remained.

However unlikely, that had not been disproven.


	25. Algebra is not an Act of Cruelty

Charles took out a clean sheet of paper and began a process he had thought only a part of his past: note-taking. So much information had been tossed about in the past few days, he needed to see the words written out just to make sense of them.

He began with the central problem, Alex and Scott. Scott believed Alex was his brother—two orphans with the same family name, it was tempting. Alex disagreed, and had definitely hit Scott and possibly used his ability against him… which made Charles pause and wonder how this had happened in his house without his knowing about it.

Scott might be immune to Alex's power. This not-quite-fact Charles circled, isolating it from the others.

Too many of his "facts" felt like gossip: things Scott, Alex, or Hank had told him. Those weren't facts, they were interpretations.

Charles sighed, turned to the back of the page, and began anew. What did he _know_?

Mainly, he knew that he had begun this exercise to make some sense of the past few weeks and it did not seem to be working. He knew that the more progress he made towards the school, the less he remembered that he had a personal life.

"That's simply not going to do," he told himself.

He couldn't forget his personal life, because he was responsible for Scott. Mature as he sometimes seemed, Scott had shown that he did not do well without guidance. Throwing things was understandable given the circumstances, even lying and disappearing could be attributed to his age and childhood.

But tonight Scott had nearly used his ability against Alex. Scott despised his power and had never really hidden that. He had tried, but he was only a child in many ways. As his ability had brought him little more than pain and mistreatment, Charles couldn't blame him. It still meant that Scott had very nearly knowingly destroyed a person.

Or at least, he had thought about it.

Charles shook off the thought. Once again he had been drawn into speculation and perspective rather than fact; was he losing his perspicacity?

He set down his pen and instead rested his fingertips against his temple.

Hank's mind was always humbling, but also reassuring. He knew what he was doing and that confidence was easy to understand, even when the rest of Hank’s thoughts were not.

Alex was dealing with his frustration through physical exertion. Charles was surprised to find that Alex was not only frustrated and confused, but deeply upset. His thoughts were a jumble, mostly drowned out by his uncertainty.

He wanted to leave.

Having so recently returned to the one place he knew it was safe to be a mutant, Alex felt he had been all but driven out. He and Charles had the same problem, actually: both wanted to find a place for Alex, but neither knew where someone like Alex belonged.

Promising himself he would try to find a solution for Alex later, Charles telepathically sought out Scott. It felt disturbingly like he was putting Scott first, but Alex was safe. He was hurt, lost, but _safe_. Scott was a kid who sometimes made very bad decisions.

Hank's mind sparked with enthusiasm for his unending pursuit of knowledge. Alex's thoughts were laced with determination. The defining attribute of Scott's mind was fear.

Charles felt it at once. And he was only a visitor! He hated to think what this mind felt like, on the inside, all the time. Scott was wrapped in patterns of fear and blame; he took responsibility for nearly using his power against Alex, but he didn't know how to handle that responsibility. And while his mind clung to those familiar thoughts…

So that settled it.

 _'Scott, I'd like a word with you.'_ Sensing hesitation, Charles added, _'Now, please.'_

When he arrived, Scott held a stack of papers in his arms. He was practically trembling.

Charles wanted to point out that he had never harmed Scott—making someone learn algebra is _not_ an act of cruelty—nor considered doing so. He wasn't that kind of a man. He didn't want to hurt anyone and could never hurt a child.

Of course, Scott's fear originated back in Omaha, in the orphanage, but Charles still didn't like to be seen as intimidating.

"Come sit down."

Scott did. He had generally been well behaved the past few months. Since Alex arrived, that had changed, and tonight had been the worst incident yet. Scott knew this. The habits Charles had so tried to diminish were back, the curled shoulders and bowed head making him look less like a boy than a whipped dog.

"Are you all right?"

Softly, he replied, "Yes, sir."

And, of course, that. Charles bit back a sigh. "Do you know what I wanted to talk about?"

"No, sir."

"What have I said about calling me that?"

"Never in fear," Scott recited.

"Yes, that's right."

Stopping Scott from being afraid was like turning back time. Charles wished he could do both—but if he couldn't keep Scott from fearing him, at least he could teach him not to grovel.

"I'm sorry, s—I'm sorry, Professor." He tended to clam up when he was afraid, so Charles was surprised when Scott asked a moment later, "Are you going to send me back?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you going to send me back to Omaha?"

At least Charles understood the question now.

"I will never send you back to that place."

Scott nodded, disbelieving but apparently unwilling to argue further. For now, that was all Charles could expect. He wished that weren't the case, but he understood that it wasn't about him. It was strange. Scott accepted others with surprising ease, even if those others were blue or violent. Even when he had been afraid of Hank, Scott worked to endear himself.

Yet for all he wanted to be liked or appreciated by others, he had no concept of himself as anything but expendable and Charles had no idea how to teach him otherwise.

So, instead, "You've cut your hair."

It was difficult to overlook the fact that Scott could no longer be mistaken for a girl. His hair was long enough to show that it needed to be combed, but indisputably masculine.

Charles realized that showing his face might be the closest thing Scott had to making eye contact.

"Mae helped," he murmured. "Did the first part with a paring knife."

After a moment spent deciphering those words, Charles asked, "Mae? …not Mae Wazowski, she's still running the library?"

He had only ever met one woman named Mae, and guessed the connection when he remembered that she had been the librarian when he was a boy.

"I don't know her last name," Scott admitted, which seemed like an agreement that the librarian had indeed cut his hair.

"Well, whoever helped you, pass on my thanks."

Scott seemed surprised. "I didn't think it mattered to you. If you told me—"

"You would have cut it long ago," Charles supplied, and Scott nodded. "I know."

At first, Charles had hoped the moptop situation was something to do with the orphanage, or a trend in Nebraska, but that hope faded as months passed. Finally, he had accepted that this was simply Scott's (ill-thought-out, youthful) choice and given how easily Scott might be influenced, the only thing for it was to wait and be patient.

"What's all this?" Charles asked, indicating the papers still clutched to Scott's chest. He took care to keep his tone gentle. The point of this chat was to reassure Scott and hopefully begin restoring sanity to the household. Neither would happen if he panicked.

Scott shifted uncomfortably. He looked at papers, then offered, "Alex is unhappy."

Charles sighed. "I know, and that's likely part of the reason he said what he did."

Scott shrugged.

"It isn't true."

No response this time.

"It isn't."

"Maybe my parents wanted to get rid of me."

"You know that's not the case," Charles reasoned. Scott said nothing, and Charles didn't have the heart to remind him that he had talked about his father's death. How was 'your parents are dead' a kindness?

"Do you pity me?"

"Scott…"

"Alex asked, did I ever wonder where I'd be if you hadn't taken pity on me. Do you pity me?"

Charles thought for a moment. This time he knew he needed to be honest because if he lied, and if Scott sensed it, any trust between them would be profoundly damaged.

There were certainly enough reasons to pity Scott. He had grown up in an orphanage, the subject of experiments that had left physical and mental scars; he had been unloved. But pity was a distant thing.

To his own surprise, Charles realized, "No, I don't."

Scott gnawed his lip, trying to work up the courage to speak. After a while he handed over the stack of papers.

"I thought Alex could…" he began, then shrugged.

Charles recognized the logo at the top of some of the papers. Most were photocopies. Included among them was a course catalog on cheap paper.

"The junior college must be a dozen miles from here."

"Not that far—and he can drive. It could work."

"But _you_ can't drive," Charles pointed out. "This is what you were doing today?"

Scott nodded. "It was Mae's idea," he said. "Alex is, well, he's a jerk, but I still think he's my brother. And maybe that's something I can be good at. 'Cause I decided, I think, as long as I'm here—and as long as he's here—I'll stay out of his way, but I need to help him."

Charles appreciated the justifications, but he zeroed in on what Scott tried bury: "Something you can be good at?"

"Well… it's not like I can really do school, I'm not smart like you and Hank. Maybe…"

"You are smart."

He was uneducated, something completely different, but Charles doubted the dichotomy would help Scott.

"Hank and I are much older than you. We've both been to college. And we are in no way similar in intellect, although I'm quite flattered you think so. I had advantages growing up, I was dedicated, but compared to Hank I'm a gibbering child."

In fact, that was one thing Charles loved about having Hank around. Hank was a peer, a friend, invaluable for advice and perspective—but simply by being himself, he kept Charles's ego in check. (More or less, anyway.)

Scott obviously disagreed, though he kept that to himself. He thought for a moment, then, "I don't think Alex will listen to me, but he might listen to you."

"How did you know about Alex's parents?" Charles wondered, knowing that was the real reason Alex wouldn't listen to Scott. It wasn't because Scott was a kid or because many people balk at taking advice from someone with so little confidence, but because Alex liked people kept distant from him and Scott crossed a line.

"It's what happened to my parents."

"Scott—"

"All I told him was about my brother."

Charles went quiet for a moment. He hated that he had to ask this question, but, "Is that the truth?"

Scott bowed his head. He had done many things lately of which he was not proud, and he was so clearly ashamed it was difficult to be angry with him. This was what Charles really needed to give Scott a break: an acknowledgment that he knew he had done something wrong.

"I did go through his stuff. I didn't mean to, the first time, I… Artie went into his room and I went after her. But I wanted to look at that picture again. That's why I kept going back."

There was another reason. Charles didn't know what it was, but he heard something not said in Scott's tone. He didn't press the matter. "You knew that was wrong."

Scott nodded. "I didn't mean to snoop. Not really. I only ever looked at his picture, his teddy bear, and, well, I found his GED certificate, too, when he'd moved the picture."

_Alex has a teddy bear?_

"Alex has a GED?"

Another nod.

"That's why you went to the college."

"Yes."

And Scott had been thorough. He had a course catalogue, application for admission, placement test information… he had information on things Charles had forgotten about not caring about as an undergraduate. And—"What's this?"

"Nothing!" Scott grabbed for the papers. Distrust made Charles move them away. What had he been up to? "I didn't mean to—I just had that in my backpack, it's not… it's not for Alex."

Scanning the page, Charles agreed, "I can see that."

It was a photocopied form from the library. Fairly straightforward, the form granted a minor permission to borrow books from the general collection. From the looks of the form, it had been in Scott's backpack a long time.

Charles took the pen from his desk and signed.

"You're not my father."

"No, I'm not."

He had not considered that signing this form might seem an intrusion. Scott looked to him for permission in most things and the librarian wasn't likely to look too closely. If she had met Scott, she knew he read with maturity.

That, and something akin to addiction.

Scott took the form.

"Do you know why I wanted to speak with you?"

A nod answered.

"I'm not going to punish you. I know that's what you think and I do apologize for reading your thoughts without permission. Things have changed over the past weeks. You're going to help me set them to rights. You and Alex—"

"I won't bother him," Scott interrupted quickly. "I won't. I'll be good, I promise."

Charles regarded him for a moment. These moments were less common than they had been the previous year, but no easier. "I expect both of you to be patient and civil with one another. And you are good. I hardly think what you've done today is negated by swearing."

Scott shrugged. "It's what you would've done."

His first response to those words took them only at face value—and had he had the idea, and a working pair of legs, Charles supposed he might have gone out to the junior college. Then he realized it had been an act of emulation. And that was rather touching.

"I'd like to think so," he replied. "Scott, when I'm frustrated with you or angry about something you've done—which does happen, from time to time—it doesn't mean you're bad or that I no longer care about you. You make mistakes; that's all right. Nobody's perfect."

Even over the triteness of those words, Charles caught the look on Scott's face.

"Oh, I am not!"

Scott just shrugged. Sometimes telepathy wasn't needed to know his thoughts.

"Most people think I need less of an ego."

Scott shrugged again, looking maddeningly pleased with himself.

"Like now, you're being incredibly aggravating," Charles said, as much teasing as he would risk with Scott in this state of mind, "but you are a good person. Even when I'm cross with you, you're still a good person."

He hesitated. There had been a quiet, desperate undercurrent in Scott's mind, a vulnerability to which he might be none too keen to admit. The conversation had already been difficult for him. Scott's jaw was clenched and twitching.

The opportunity for Scott to actually hear him was too much for Charles to pass up.

"I very much wish," he began, using a term not usually in his vocabulary, "you could see yourself for who you are, not stupid or worthless or disposable." They were all ideas in Scott's head, thoughts Charles heard repeated over and over. If he knew how to telepathically remove them, he just might have done so! "Because that's not what you are. You matter. You may not see it, but even if you don't matter to yourself, you matter to me. You will always have a home here and I will always care about you."

Scott swallowed.

"I, um…"

His fingernails dug into his knees and he took a shaky breath—then bowed his head and began to cry.


	26. An Experiment

In the months Charles had known him, Scott cried twice during the day. There were nightmares and the sobs both Charles and Hank pretended never to have heard, which no one acknowledged. It would have humiliated Scott. On several occasions he had sulked about Artie being an outdoor cat—though that hadn't lasted long—and been frustrated nearly to tears with algebra or attempts to control his gift, but he rarely actually _cried_.

It happened first at Christmas. That was when Charles began to appreciate how bereft Scott's life had truly been, that being given a gift reduced him to tears. He had run off and hidden for about an hour before being able to accept it. (Unsurprisingly, books; he borrowed them so often it only seemed right he should have a couple to call his own, even if someone else's name had been crossed out and his written in.)

The second time involved dishes. Specifically, it involved a knife that slipped and sliced into three of his fingers. He handled the cuts well enough. Hydrogen peroxide proved more of a challenge.

A year ago, Charles would have had no idea what to do in this situation. A year ago, he had not been responsible for a multi-fractured teenager. This moment was a long time coming.

He rested a hand on the back of Scott's head, well aware that the boy responded to touch about as well as his pet cat did. Like Artie, he became either completely docile or completely wary. Today he was docile.

"It's all right, Scott."

"I made so many mistakes."

"People make mistakes. It's how we learn."

After a moment's struggle for breath, Scott tried to shrug the whole incident off with a half-sobbed, "You really are a dork, you know."

"Yes, well, you're fifteen."

Scott laughed. A few moments later he managed to get himself enough under control to ask, "What if I really weren't? What if I'm right, if that thing Hank found in my blood means I'm all grown up?"

"You're not all grown up. Even if you were older than you appear to be, your mind is a teenager's. _You_ are a teenager."

In a way, maybe that was lucky. A man in his late twenties with Scott's emotional and educational disadvantages would face a steep climb. A teenager stood a much better chance of catching up to his peers academically, and emotionally… teenagers were meant to be volatile.

A part of Charles did not quite believe he was considering this, but he could not help remembering how Scott talked about school.

_I forgot things._

In Omaha, Scott had been in remedial classes. Charles assumed this was because nobody cared about him. His mind wandered a bit and he needed guidance, but he wasn't stupid. If he truly was twenty-something, his education had surely been fragmented. Of course he had never learned properly.

"I'm confused. I'm really, really confused."

"I know."

Scott had enough control of himself now that he dropped his hands. He was still crying, but in a calmer, almost matter-of-fact way.

"Why did he do it?"

"If I had an answer…"

"I want to hate him. For everything he did, for my entire _life_ —Mr. Milbury took everything and I should hate him, but I hate… being his experiment. Everything I am is because of him."

Moments like that tried Charles's patience more than anything else, and he wondered if he could use Cerebro to find Milbury and kill him. It would be immensely satisfying for what he'd done to Scott. But it wouldn't be right and it wouldn't change anything, and worse, using Hank's invention to that end would be a slap in the face.

Instead he brushed his thumb against Scott's cheek, a mix of a tender gesture and a suggestion that he had perhaps done enough crying now.

"You are who you are, and that's nothing to do with Mr. Milbury. You are kind, insightful, and considerate; we've only just begun to see what you might be capable of. You're a person, not an experiment. And an exceptional one at that."

Charles suspected Milbury _had_ taught Scott the insights he showed towards poetry and philosophy through resounding pains beyond what any single word expressed, but he didn't want Scott associating those two.

After a moment, Scott muttered a somewhat embarrassed, "Thank you. And I'm sorry for, you know, for all the whining and stuff, lately, and… crying…"

"You don't need to apologize for that."

"I mean all the times I've got like this."

"As do I."

Charles had always taken the 'tell me what's wrong' approach. It had been so much easier with Raven. Her problems were usually things he could fix. How could he fix Scott? Just tell him, over and over, that he was a good person until Scott was brainwashed into accepting the truth?

Scott shifted awkwardly for a moment, the way he did when he needed to say something but really didn't want to. "Aren't you going to yell at me or anything? For throwing the fork and cussing?"

"If there's one thing I won't allow in this house it's deliberate cruelty."

"I wasn't—"

"No, but Alex was. As far as I'm concerned, he is responsible for the events of this evening. I'm not mad at him," Charles added, hearing the protest coming, "but I fully intend to speak with him about his behavior and nothing you can say will change my mind."

Somehow, he needed to make Alex understand that there was no excuse for trying to hurt someone, or for hitting anyone and leaving the kind of bruises he had left on Scott.

Scott did have a role to play in all of this, though.

"I'll speak with him, you will stay out of his room, and hopefully this won't happen again."

Another nod. "Did Hank say anything about, um, what happened the other day?"

"Whatever has happened between you and Hank is your business and his," Charles replied, "but I'm not too concerned."

"Hank is the only friend I've ever had."

It wasn't meant as a slight and Charles understood that. He wasn't Scott's friend. He was not sure precisely what he was to Scott, but not that, because friends are equals and they both knew Scott would never see himself that way.

"And because he is your friend, he will understand. Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. I just… it's a lot to… process."

This time it was Charles who nodded. He wasn't sure anything he could say would help.

Instead, he suggested, "That's about enough for one night, I think. Besides, you must have library books in desperate need of attention."

"Yeah," Scott admitted, sounding a touch bashful and very much like his usual self. "And a Philosophy assignment I haven't started."

"I must be going deaf, I didn't hear a word you said."

As Scott headed for the door, Charles debated whether he wanted to raise one more subject. It was important enough to nag at his thoughts—but Scott was so deeply damaged. Many odd behaviors might be attributed to his time in the orphanage, and more often than not, Charles simply ignored it.

This time… "Scott."

He paused. "Yes?"

"Unpack."

Scott nodded.

"Never do that again. You are a person, not a thing to be got rid of. If you want to leave, you are free to go, but don't assume you'll have no choice. I'm rather hurt you would think so low of me."


	27. The Best Scrabble Score in History

The following morning, before the heat and humidity lit the very air on fire, Scott settled outside. He was still trying to make sense of the previous day. It felt like much more than a single day, from the argument with Alex, to the hack job he had given his hair, to biking out to the community college.

He still ached from the trip to the community college, though it was the crying spell that really exhausted him.

Someone else might have felt a sense of peace and renewal looking up at the cloudless blue sky. Scott appreciated the relatively cool weather and the cloudlessness, but a vast red sky is scarcely calming. He had promised to be polite to Alex but the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to punch Alex in the face.

Not that punching Alex in the face would help anything. Alex was bigger and stronger and wouldn't care about hurt feelings. He could punch harder, and would.

Scott sighed and dropped his head. He stayed that way until he felt a gentle nudge at his side.

"Hey, Artie."

He scooped her up. Although Artie had been described to him in terms of color, Scott wasn't sure he cared. She was perhaps the chief instance in his life in which sight was not the most important sense. Sight didn't tell him how her fur felt, or her nose, or about the steady tremor when she purred.

Human footsteps approached a moment later. Scott didn't have the will to see who it was; either it was Alex and he was better off not turning, or…

Hank dropped onto the step beside Scott. For a while, he said nothing. Neither did Scott. When they first met, he had been hesitant with Hank because of his appearance. Now he was hesitant because the two had not really spoken since the day Hank saw the bruises and Scott basically told him to go screw himself.

"I'm, uh—I was—so Eowyn is awesome. Or I guess Dernhelm…"

"'Living or dark undead'?" Hank guessed. "The Witch-King?"

Scott nodded. "She's basically groovetacular."

"Groovetacular."

"Groovetacular. Like groovy, only groovier."

"Groovetacular it is then. Well if _anyone_ is groovetacular…" Hank agreed, laughing.

They lapsed into silence for a few moments. It was long enough for Scott to scrape together what he needed to say.

"I'm sorry—about the other day, when—I shouldn't've said that."

"It's okay. It was a bad day. Alex told us your theory, about the two of you being brothers."

"And?"

Artie, at this point, decided she'd had enough attention. She gave Scott a nudge with her claws. While he would deem her a completely untrainable animal, she surely considered him the opposite. He knew which meows meant she wanted food, opened the window when it rained, and recognized her presence as cause for adoration.

But she had a yard full of shrews and crickets, so she scrambled away for now.

Scott wrapped his arms around his knees.

"Obviously it's difficult to test," Hank reasoned. "I can examine cellular structure, but DNA is beyond me."

Did that mean Hank believed Scott and Alex were brothers? The idea baffled Scott. Hank was a scientist. He believed in facts, understood facts, and occasionally bubbled two facts together in a beaker just for the fun of it. Yet he seemed to simply accept the idea that Scott and Alex might be related.

First, however, "What's DNA?"

"Tell you over Scrabble?"

Scott grinned. "Definitely."

When they had the board set up, Hank flipped a coin for first move. Scott called heads and hoped for tails, since he preferred taking second move.

Hank spelled out 'halve'.

Scott looked between the board and his letters. "So you believe me?" he asked. "You think Alex is my brother?"

His tone was sedate. Scott still found the evidence all too compelling. It was difficult to put into words why he didn't just _want_ to believe the photograph was his. He couldn't remember carrying such a thing. The teddy bear seemed familiar, but didn't all children have teddy bears?

He spelled out 'lithoid'.

"You're clever at this!"

"Look who's talkin'."

Three moves later, as though no time had passed at all, Hank added, "And I don't believe you or disbelieve you. I'm a scientist, Scott. I don't deal in faith. It's not a question of whether Alex _is_ your brother but whether he _could be_ your brother, and he rationally could."

"So do you think he is?" Scott pressed.

Hank sighed. "It's very strange," he admitted, "and it's not the likeliest of explanations, but it could be possible."

"Can't you just say yes or no?"

Laying one more tile on the board, Hank retorted, "Yes or no."

Scott chucked an r. It hit Hank on the shoulder and bounced to the floor. Scott retrieved the tile and set it back with the others.

When they had both stopped laughing, Hank explained, "Like I said, I'm a scientist. Until it's a fact, it's a question and a hypothesis." As he laid out his tiles, he asked, "You remember the scientific method, right?"

"Question, research, hypothesis, experiment, data, conclusion," Scott recited.

"So our question is, 'Are Scott and Alex brothers?' How about research, what do you _know_?"

"I know he has a photograph of people who look like my parents, and a—and something labeled S.S., which are not his initials. But they are mine. And I'm pretty sure my brother's name was Alexander Cole Summers, which is our Alex's name, too."

"It is," Hank confirmed.

"I told him everything I remembered about my childhood. It scared him. Hank, I _know_ it scared him because it reminded him of his own childhood."

"What was it? Where he was born and his parents' names?" Hank asked. When Scott nodded, Hank agreed, "That's research, then. Actually, that's data, that's a conclusion drawn from a previous experiment. Now we just need an experiment that can prove, one way or another, whether Alex is your brother."

Finally, Hank laid his letters on the board. Scott burst out laughing.

"I didn't have a great hand."

"Oh, it's not that."

And Scott played his hand. Hank could not have chosen a more perfect word when he spelled "other" along the side of the board. He tended to be somewhat absent-minded when he talked about science, so he had opened up two triple word tiles.

Hank shook his head. "I can't believe that's funny to you," he murmured, disapproving but unable to keep from laughing.

"Good morning."

Charles rolled into the room. Even a few months ago, Scott would have tried to make himself invisible, will himself to become wallpaper—now he was too busy snickering to even think about it.

"He's just scored 212 points with 'motherfucker'," Hank explained.

"Ah. Well, it's nice to see you in high spirits again, whatever the cause."

Hank glanced between them and decided he needed coffee.

"Don't let him look at my letters," he added as he made his way out of the room.

Scott made an indignant noise, but didn't bother protesting. They both knew Hank was just teasing: he had lost fair and square. They would keep playing, but the game was Scott's.

Feeling the attention on him, Scott looked at his hands. He could swear the temperature rose ten degrees at least.

"Are you all right?"

Scott was quiet a moment. Then, "Do you remember, I told you about the foster home?"

By the time Charles found the memory and responded that, yes, he remembered, Scott had forgotten what he wanted to say about it. It had, for a fleeting moment, seemed relevant.

"I didn't mean to cry."

"Given what you've been through, I'm surprised it took you so long," Charles replied. "You don't have to be strong all the time. You can let people help you."

Scott wasn't sure how to explain that this was wholly untrue, that only someone who had never really needed help would say such a thing. You couldn't let people help you. That taught you to be reliant on them and that was a mistake. Always.

Instead, after too long a wait, he drew seven tiles. They were not overly promising, but 'motherfucker' had been a once-in-a-lifetime stroke of luck.

"You saved my life," he said. "I owe you enough."

"Owe me?" Charles asked, incredulous.

Of course he didn't understand. Someone who always had everything didn't understand what it meant, what it really meant, to give.

When Scott didn't answer, he continued, "I lost everything before meeting you, Scott. Everything. I was angry and lost and I didn't care or want to care. I'd like to believe you were a catalyst, but you weren't, were you? So yes, I likely did save your life, and you have done the same for me."

Not knowing what to say was scarcely new for Scott. In Omaha, it hadn't mattered what he said. No one cared. No one listened. So even after all these months, he still hadn't fully adapted to knowing that someone listened not only to what he said but, sometimes, to what he thought.

He wasn't sure anyone would know what to say. Instead they sat in silence until Hank returned.

"What's going on?"

"Do you want to play?" Scott asked Charles. "I already won."

"So it doesn't matter if you use your powers," Hank added.

"I don't use my—fine. I would love to play." Charles reached for the tiles. "Actually, I would like to use my telepathy, but not for the game. With your permission, Scott, I'd like to look through your memories."

Scott hesitated. He remembered some pretty embarrassing stuff. He remembered asking Hank to tell Charles he had gone to the library early just to avoid speaking with him.

"Nothing recent," Charles added, as though—perhaps—reading his mind.

Scott nodded. He wasn't thrilled with the idea, but not unhappy enough to be defiant.

Charles joined the game of Scrabble, after all, though he couldn't hide a look of mild disapproval every time he glanced at the obscenity down the side of the board. He didn't mention whether or not he had read Scott's mind and after a while no one seemed to think about it.

"What does coffee taste like?" Scott wondered.

It was a pretty reasonable question, the way Hank sucked down coffee like a vampire would blood.

Hank and Charles exchanged a look, both trying to find the right answer.

"Bitter," Hank said, finally. "You can try it if you want."

"A caffeinated teenager, that's just what we need," Charles remarked, making Scott pause. "Go ahead if you like, Scott."

He hesitated, then took Hank's mug and drank.

The reaction was immediate: repulsion. Scott covered his mouth like that was the only thing keeping him from spitting out the coffee and whimpered. Hank and Charles laughed as Scott forced himself to swallow something that was—and he had not previously imagined this possible—worse than tea.

"That's _awful_! How do you… augh! That's just…"

"It's an acquired taste," Charles offered.

"Why would anyone acquire that?"

"Because they do," Hank replied, taking his cup back. "It's a grown-up thing."

Predicting his response, Charles warned, "Scott, don't."

"Wasn't gonna," Scott mumbled.

"Good. Because I can ground you."

For a moment, no one was sure whether or not this was a joke—but it had to be. If Scott was grounded every time he responded to Hank with a rude gesture, he would never go to the library again.

Hank had taken another turn at Scrabble and scored a miserable six points. "Scott and I were discussing his hypothesis regarding himself and Alex."

Charles sighed. "Please don't encourage this, Hank."

"Either Scott was wrong and he won't mention it again or Scott's right and… well. I'm not sure there's a scientific word for what that would be."

"Do you think they're brothers?" Charles wondered.

"I don't know."

"But do you think—"

"I'm a scientist," Hank interrupted. "I don't _know_. But Scott is my friend, so I'm examining the problem and attempting to determine a potential solution. Of course, even if I did, there's no telling whether Alex would go along with it."

"No telling whether Alex would go along with what?"

The three of them turned. While they had been absorbed in their discussion, Alex had arrived.

Scott looked at his tiles and murmured, "Nothing."

Hank took a different approach. "Scott thinks you're his brother," he reminded Alex. "I've been considering ways in which to test this. Though, of course, to do so without you would be impossible."

Alex cleared his throat. "Yeah, about that…"

Scott braced himself. Last night, fighting back, that had been a mistake. That was wrong, and not something he intended to repeat. Alex could say whatever he wanted.

"If you can think of something, I'm game."


	28. Always

Charles stared at Alex, scarcely able to believe his ears. Now Alex, too, entertained the possibility that he was Scott's brother? Not twelve hours ago the idea had been preposterous-bordering-on-upsetting.

They hadn't spoken last night. By the time Scott calmed down, Alex was blazed. Charles wasn't thrilled about the marijuana, but he was willing to turn a blind eye. Unfortunately, a conversation with Alex while stoned was pointless.

So he hadn't been able to relay Scott's promise to stay out of Alex's room, discuss community college, or make sure Alex knew that he needed to solve his problems without violence or cruelty.

"What changed your mind?" he asked.

Alex shrugged. "Does it matter?"

The madness seemed contagious, then, because Charles saw the similarities. He had seen that look on Scott's face countless times, the same poorly-concealed secret written in Alex's features now. What that secret was, Charles couldn't say, but they both failed to keep it with that remarkable lack of grace.

"Yes, it matters."

"I don't think it does," Scott offered. He wasn't skilled with defiance—and this, for Scott, was defiance. He spoke so softly, so gently, keeping his eyes on his hands. "If he doesn't want to say…"

_Oh, Scott._

Suddenly Charles understood what Scott meant about being a good brother, why he had spent the last weeks insisting, 'Don't be mad at Alex'. Would it ever go away, this belief of Scott's that there was darkness and pain around every corner?

Alex shrugged again. "Things got a little out of hand last night."

It was more of an apology than any of them expected from him.

"I haven't thought of an experiment yet," Hank added. "It's a difficult hypothesis to validate."

"Possibly not."

Was that his voice? Charles supposed it must be. The whole thing still felt foolish and impossible to him, but an end to it—now there was a rational thing.

"Scott, I've seen some of your very early memories. Your brother was young, but if we are treating this as a possibility, which I must say I can scarcely believe we are, I can search Alex's memories. If you agree, of course," he told Alex.

He expected an objection. He expected Alex to say that wasn't any of his business, or Scott to say he hadn't wanted anyone reading those memories.

Instead Alex took a seat and nodded. "Yeah," he said, "go ahead."

Alex's mind was easier to read than Scott's. There were no doors subjected to such desperate, feeble attempts to keep them shut, no areas of lost darkness. There was pain and confusion, but not so overwhelming.

One thing Charles had learned about reading minds was that, often, one's mind knew more than one realized. Just as Erik had been surprised to learn he still held happy memories of family, Alex might not know he remembered being so young.

On the surface was guilt. Alex didn't deal with it well and that, in addition to fear, led to his aggressive reactions to Scott. He did feel bad for hurting him. He took out that pain on the cause—Scott. At least now he was trying to do something different.

His memories were jumbled. Memories always were. One of the first things Charles had learned about reading memories was that they weren't as simple as reading thoughts, that often it was a matter of understanding how a person's mind worked to successfully navigate it.

_The first thing he noticed was the cold and a wind so strung it stung his eyes and made his ears hurt. The wind was the problem, really, buffeting around a wooden space no one would believe for an aircraft but a boy too young to know otherwise. Yet here they were, aloft._

_"We love you so much." Katherine Summers knelt in front of her children, nearly eye level for them, her voice weighted with import. Silently, pleading with them not to forget her in a way Alex didn't understand because he knew his parents loved him. "Mommy and Daddy love you, remember that."_

_Their mother. Frantic. Terrified. Alex didn't realize it, not at that age, but she was. He was crying more from confusion than anything else, but the tears on her face were slow, matter-of-fact, one at a time like there was no need to rush._

_Alex cried because there was too much happening at once and he hit his head earlier and he was too cold. He cried because his mother was acting strangely and it made him uncomfortable. Only barely out of toddlerhood, the youngest child, the little brother, always protected._

_"Mommy…"_

_That whimper didn't come from Alex. It couldn't: he didn't understand, and that voice had understanding in it. Scott cried like his mother, an afterthought thing his eyes did while he had far more serious concerns. He didn't understand everything, but enough to be more deeply afraid than his little brother._

_Katherine looked to him and his lip quivered._

_"Shh, it's all right, sweetheart." She pulled him close. "I love you so much."_

_Alex, in a burst of left-out-ness, howled, "Mommy!" and Katherine obliged him, holding both her sons to her. She didn't want to let go. Alex didn't know it then, felt only comfort in his mother's arms, but her hold became calmer, resolved._

_"Dammit, Katherine, we don't have time for this!"_

_"Of course." She tried to pull back. "Let go, Scott."_

_"No."_

_"Baby—"_

_"Scott!" Christopher snapped. "You listen to your mother, take care of Alex!"_

_Alex had no memory of what was said, only a few last moments of his mother cuddling him and singing a lullaby. She bundled them both into the parachute rig, very matter-of-factly like she was putting on their coats and boots before they could play in the snow._

_Finally, she pressed something into his brother's hand. "Once you're in the air, pull on this as hard as you can. Whatever happens, don't let go."_

_He nodded. "I won't. An' I won't let anything happen to Alex, I promise."_

_She smiled—their mother—Katherine. Crying and smiling like she knew this was the last time either of her sons would see her, the last time she would see them, too, but it was the image they would have to carry in their hearts._

_"We love you, boys. We always, always love you."_

Charles sat back, himself once more, uncharacteristically quiet, uncharacteristically wrong. Stunned as he was, he realized that: he had been completely wrong. As impossible as it seemed…

"Charles?" Hank asked.

How? The question remained. Hank had asked why not. But _how_? It was so unlikely a thing, that two boys from Nebraska should make their way here—that of all the people in the world, two who just happened to be brothers should find their way here.

He nodded. "Yes," he reported. "I can't say how, but as unlikely as it sounds, your memories match one another's. You're brothers." Had he actually just said that?

For a moment, no one knew what to say. It was Hank who broke the silence with, "Can I take a blood sample?"

"You're weird," Alex informed him.

"I'm interested in the similarities between your respective mutations," Hank explained. "The two of you have similar manifestations, it's… unprecedented, in my experience. The sudden evolutionary leap is already, well, perhaps not _inexplicable_ but there's been no proven causal link to any other modern phenomenon, if you and Scott are brothers then you're the first example I've encountered of blood siblings both mutated and—"

"Hank," Charles interrupted. It wasn't the first time Hank had spoken as he thought, but there was a note of discomfort in Charles's voice. "You're not experimenting on them."

"No, of course not," Hank agreed. "Research. Not experiments."

"Alex, how old are you?" Scott wondered.

"Twenty-three."

"How old are you?" Hank wondered right back. Obviously, he wasn't fifteen.

"I, uh… I'm twenty-five."

"You look good for an old man," Alex retorted. Charles had the distinct impression that Scott was rolling his eyes.

"Holy shit."

It was an apt summary. Nevertheless, "Scott."

Before he could muster a proper apology, Alex agreed, "Yeah, watch your fuckin' mouth, asshole."

Everyone had to laugh at that. "Honestly," Charles remarked, "we may have found the one thing worse than the two of you fighting—the two of you getting along."

"Remember that question you said you wanted answered?" Hank asked Scott. "The day Alex got here, that morning."

Scott began to shake his head, then paused. Charles looked between the two of them and, too curious to resist, read an answer in Scott's mind. The day Alex arrived, he had spoken to Hank before going to the library. It was a Monday. And Scott said…

_I wish I had a reason._

"Yeah."

He still wanted that question answered, why Milbury had chosen him, had done what he did…

"As a scientist, my interest is in the similarity between your ability and Alex's, the potential implications of a current shift as a trigger and what it might imply also about your parents. That said, were my interest solely in your ability itself, you and Alex are similar enough that either of you alone might suffice. One or the other."

Scott took a moment to think it through for a few seconds, then he smiled.

"Thank you."

He hadn't thought anything could soften what had happened in the orphanage. He still felt a mix of angry towards Milbury and repulsed with himself as the outcome of an experiment, but at least now it wasn't senseless cruelty.

It was what he let happen to him so it didn't happen to his little brother.

"Twenty years… uh… wow… excuse me a moment."

The words were unusually formal, for Scott. He stood and walked out of the room. The three of them glanced at one another, 'I have no idea' being clearly conveyed. It made sense, though. Scott responded the only way one really could to learning that what had seemed like ten years of Hell had truly been twenty.

He bolted for the bathroom and vomited.


	29. Not What You Expect

Scott coughed up bile and coffee, the edges of the tiles digging into his knees. Almost immediately his body began to calm, like it had needed that one moment to purge itself of evil. It never would, of course. Not with evil imprinted on his cells, slowing his aging… did it slow his thinking? Was that why he struggled in school?

_Twenty-five years old._

How could he be twenty-five years old?

Spending the rest of the day—possibly the rest of his life—on the floor, trying not to think, sounded great. Instead Scott forced himself to stand and walk to the sink. He washed his hands out of habit, then rinsed his mouth.

Looking in the mirror, he did not see a twenty-five-year-old man. He saw a fifteen-year-old boy who wished he didn't feel like such a helpless child, and a thirty-year-old in the doorway who seemed to think he had gone unnoticed.

"He kept me a child," Scott said, "because when I grew up I could leave."

"I wouldn't doubt it," Charles agreed. "Are you all right?"

Scott nodded. He wasn't, but then, they both knew that.

"I can bring the memory to the front of your mind—your parents. If you'd like."

"Would it help?"

"Yes, I believe so."

Scott wasn't sure. Maybe it would help, but maybe remembering would only hurt. How much could he miss his parents if he didn't even remember them? But if he did—if the memory came forward in his mind, if they became people—he hadn't really grieved. He had adjusted.

Some part of him knew that if he remembered his parents now, he would mourn their loss. It was beyond his ability to endure.

"You should know that you were never in foster care."

That wasn't right. Scott remembered. Mr. Milbury told him—he went with the family one morning and they brought him back the following evening. They didn't want him. "No, that's—I was. For two days."

"It was a lie. Perhaps to control you, perhaps to hurt you, but think of what Milbury did to keep you young. He wouldn't have risked losing you. I searched your memories. There was never any foster home."

Scott took a deep breath. _For Alex_ , he reminded himself, because the lie had hurt. Being looked over was one thing. Potential parents had plenty of orphans to choose from; empty as it made him feel, he could accept not being among the most likable. But being so deeply flawed that after a few days with him, a couple preferred childlessness…

He gripped the sink, trying to keep from physically seething. He knew there were bad people in the world, but there was no word too cold for Milbury, nor any word so cold as the man himself.

"Hank is a scientist, but he would never do something like this," Scott said, the closest he could manage to putting his thoughts to words. "Experiment. That's the word Milbury used. He—did things—he—what was the point? An experiment always has a purpose, a hypothesis to test."

This was, undeniably, a conversation. Even Scott had to accept that, so he finally turned away from the sink and pretended he had manners.

"We can't determine what motivates a man like that. I don't think it would do us any good to even try. He's in your past now."

"I guess," Scott agreed, because he nearly always agreed. He wasn't sure Milbury was his past, though. Not until the nightmares stopped.

"It's not what you expected, is it, getting what you want?" Charles asked.

It wasn't. Scott realized, thinking about it, that he had not wanted to know that Alex was his brother. He had wanted to feel it. He wanted not to be an orphan anymore.

Scott didn't and couldn't answer, and the question had probably been rhetorical, anyway.

"Alex wants to speak with you, when you're ready."

He nodded. "What's going to happen to me?"

"Hopefully this will wear off and you'll return to aging normally. Hank may be able to tell. You're still welcome here, you always will be."

"I'm older than Hank now."

"Yes, I suppose you are."

"I shouldn't be, you know. In high school."

"Scott, you are not an adult. You're fifteen. That's what he allowed you, fifteen years."

Scott considered that. Fifteen years as himself. Ten years as Milbury's. He tugged at his sweater and tried not to think about what that made him.

"Where's Alex?"

Charles telepathically sought him out. "He's outside, attempting to pet the cat. With little success, I might add."

In the two minutes Scott needed to gather his thoughts and walk out the front door, Alex had resigned himself to the fact that he would not be petting Artie. Instead he brushed a stalk of grass along her fur and tried to avoid being clawed when she attacked the grass. The plastic picture frame lay face-down beside him.

"Hey, Alex."

"Hey."

"You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yeah," Alex agreed, then for a long moment stayed quiet. "Um… you know how to rebuild an engine?"

Scott shook his head. "I'd like to learn."

Alex had not wanted to talk about engines. He picked up the picture frame, detached the back, and slid out two photos. He offered them to Scott. One was the familiar photograph of the family.

"Flip it over," Alex told him.

Scott did.

The words were faint, but still legible. In faded blue ink on the back: _Christopher, Scott Matthew, Katherine Anne_. And under 'Katherine Anne', written in another hand: _(Alexander Cole Summers)_.

Scott stared at the words. He knew those names. His parents. His brother. Him. This was his family.

"They're young," he observed. It was his first time really looking at the picture and seeing it, not thinking about what it might imply, and he realized that his mother looked about Alex's age, his father a few years older. Was that how old he should be, how he ought to look? "She looked just like you."

"Yeah."

"Where did these come from?"

Alex shrugged. "I've had them as long as I can remember. You should have this one, though."

"Thank you."

"It was never really mine."

Scott wanted to reply that he didn't mind, but Alex had a point. Why should he hang on to pictures of a family he had not yet become a part of? That said, "Do you want this one?" It didn't seem right that he should have both pictures. They had so little left of their parents.

"I didn't even know it was there. It's not mine."

He wanted to keep it for himself. The way Scott grew up, he had no one to love him, no one to reminisce. Nobody told him stories about when he was a little boy, certainly nobody cared enough to keep pictures. He wanted these reminders that he had, once, been loved.

Scott set the photo in Alex's hand. "You should have this one," he said.

It was a picture with an obvious story behind it: a mother guiding her son's arms, telling him to be very careful, the strangeness of trusting a little boy with a newborn.

"That's you and me."


	30. Epilogue

Sean grinned when he caught sight of Alex. It had been almost a year since he last saw his friend, though something more than a familiar face made him so happy. In fact, he had no face at all to go by, just Alex half-buried under the hood of a car.

Oh, this was too good to be true!

If Alex hadn't turned up the radio for 'Little Red Rooster', Sean wouldn't have even noticed the open garage door. Now he made his way around the car, leaned in and hit the horn.

Alex startled, smacking his head on the hood.

Sean laughed. It wasn't cruel. He and Alex joked, everything from cling film to Kool-Aid showerheads to the time Alex convinced Sean that he had once eaten a teaspoon of cinnamon.

Only when he heard, "Oww! Not cool, Alex!" did Sean realize he had made a mistake.

"Oh, no… uh… sorry!"

The person under the hood—the one who wasn't Alex—stepped around to see who had blasted the horn.

"I thought you were Alex," Sean explained.

"Well, that makes more sense…"

"I'm really sorry."

"'s okay." He offered his hand. "I'm Scott."

"Sean," he said, shaking Scott's hand.

"Sean—oh. Wow. I have some of your stuff—I didn't know you were coming. I'll wash it tonight and—"

"Don't worry about it," Sean interrupted. The sweater Scott wore now looked far more worn in than it had been the last time he saw it: the color was faded, a new patch added, the cuffs fraying. It wasn't his anymore. "You keep it." Assuming the rest of the clothes were like this, they were Scott's now.

Besides, Hank had been fairly clear on the kid's situation.

"Welcome back. I mean—good to meet you. I've heard about you. Could you really fly?"

"I could," he answered. Could? Still can, he hoped, but there were places in the world one did not simply begin to fly. _This is a muscle_ , Charles had told him, and Sean had carefully controlled that muscle for months. He hadn't really used it but to whisper.

Rather than delve into this with a stranger, Sean asked, "What can you do?"

"He's annoying." The response came from Alex, who made his way into the garage. "Like really, really annoying. Superhuman levels of twerp. Figured that was you honking. Hey, Banshee."

"Havok." For an awkward moment they regarded one another and Sean realized that he wanted to hug Alex. He didn't—they were guys—but he couldn't remember the last time he was so happy to see someone. "How've you been?"

"Good. You? Hey, Scott, weren't you gonna go say hi to the new kid?"

Scott raised his eyebrows. "How about you and Sean hang out inside while I finish up here?"

"Right. 'Cause you've talked about anything besides the new students for a week. Why do you suddenly not care?"

"I do care!" Scott objected.

Sean watched this interaction with interest. He didn't know what was going on between Alex and Scott—he had never suspected Alex would be any good with kids. Yet here he was, bantering.

"I just… I dunno how to talk to girls," Scott continued.

Sean repressed the urge to laugh. He had been there. So, so many times he had stood in this boy's shoes.

"Open your mouth and babble incoherently like usual," Alex retorted. "C'mon, you owe me."

"No I don't."

Alex raised his fist. Although both Sean and Scott seemed to understand Alex wouldn't actually hit him, Scott bolted.

Alex shook his head.

"Some day, I'll tell you the story on that kid," he promised Sean.

"Yeah, one day," Sean replied. "But today, I need your help—tell me on the way."

_Meanwhile…_

Charles sighed. "Do you ever listen to anyone?"

"Do _I_ ever…?" Ruth gasped. "I listen! I listen! So I can hear when you are wrong!"

"And you are the most stubborn, impossible woman I have ever met!" he retorted.

This was quite possibly true. Moira might have been determined, Raven secretive and temperamental, and Angel poised like a snake to bite, but Ruth was more a challenge than all three combined when she set her mind.

Ruth opened her mouth, then shook her head.

" _Nishbar le ha'zain_. I need a moment," she said before walking out of the room.

From the hallway, Charles heard, "Hello, Hank," and found his frustration with Ruth dissolving. It was only frustrating in the moment, somehow. Once the moment passed, he found himself left with nothing but admiration. She was impossible, but she was _delightfully_ impossible. And this was, after all, a home for impossible things, for twenty-five-year-olds who looked like kids, women who bounced bullets, teenage goddesses and furry blue geniuses.

The aforementioned fury blue genius stepped into the room. "So that sounded… heated."

"Ruth is an opinionated woman," Charles replied.

Of course, Hank already knew that. Rather than recoiling from his appearance or politely ignoring it, she had outright asked. When he tried explaining his experiment, she listened as long as she could before admitting she had no idea what he was talking about.

He nodded. "I don't suppose you're too busy for a game of chess?"

"Part of one," Charles agreed. "Then I should check in on our new student, see that she's settling in well."

"You're not going now?"

"You know how teenagers are. It's best to give them time. You can be white."

Hank looked at his blue hands and laughed.

“…in the chess game,” Charles amended.

_Meanwhile…_

Scott hovered just around the corner, where he had been for the past six minutes. A few times he had caught a glimpse of her, though every time it happened he darted back into hiding.

The third time, he sighed and jammed his hands in his pockets. He _wanted_ to say something, he really did! Everyone else was wonderful, but they were adults (and Alex). Scott wanted to say something to the new student because they were peers.

Sort of.

Except she was a girl.

An actual girl.

"Hey." That and a tap on his shoulder called Scott's attention. "You're spying on me."

Scott shook his head, even though he knew it was true. "I… I wasn't, I…"

"Yes?"

"I meant to say hello."

"To the wall?"

"I don't know how to talk to girls," he blurted.

The girl in question raised her eyebrows. She was shorter than Scott by at least five inches, but stood straight and sure while he curled his shoulders. She looked to him like determination incarnate from the set of her jaw and the way she folded her arms across her chest.

After a moment, she objected, "I'm thirteen and I can probably beat you up. I'm not a _girl_ girl."

"I guess," Scott agreed.

He did not know how to talk to girls, but he did know that they were always right. Context didn't matter. Girls were always right.

"Are you like Charles and Ruth?" she asked, surprising him.

 _Charles and Ruth?_ Sure, he knew those were their names, but he didn't know how this girl referred to them so casually. Even though Ruth insisted she did not need to be called Ms. Bat-Seraph, Scott couldn't bring himself to address an adult by her first name.

Managing to focus on her actual question, "I—yes, I am. I have a… ability."

"Are everyone here…?"

Scott nodded: yes, everyone here was a mutant. He preferred not to use the word. No matter how many times the Professor explained it, Scott still felt like he knew the definition, but didn't know enough to explain it to someone else.

Falling back on manners, he offered his hand. "Scott Summers."

She accepted the handshake. "Ororo Munroe."

"D'you, um…" That lack of social skills kicked in again. There were polite things to say here. Right? Would it be rude to ask about her power? Or how she had come to be here? Or about the accent he couldn't help but notice? "D'you play soccer?" he blurted.

She grinned. "Race you," she returned, and the next thing he knew he was darting after a thirteen-year-old, racing her out into the sunlight.

_Meanwhile…_

Ruth returned maybe ten minutes after storming out, to find Charles and Hank partway through a game of chess. (He had asked her about this, and she had replied honestly that she had no skill on the chessboard but no objection to giving it a shot, either.)

"May I interrupt?"

"By all means," Charles replied.

"I cede that you are correct," Ruth admitted. "It will be dangerous for others to know what we are, or the children are, but I think there must be some way to… it is one thing not to tell truth, another completely to lie."

Charles considered that.

"Yes," he agreed, "it is, and we can find a way to conceal the full truth without outright lying."

"We still need a name for the school," Hank offered. "'Professor X's Mutant Academy' might be a little on the nose, but… 'School for Individuals with Unique Talents' or something."

"Bit of a mouthful," Charles objected, "but good idea, Hank. We'll think of something. Ruth, I don't suppose you've seen Ororo lately?"

Ruth nodded. "I have. She's outside with Scott playing soccer-football, have a look." She knew the American term was 'soccer'; her use of the hyphenated term was a joke. Charles didn't find it funny, but he accepted that Ruth did. He was fast learning that this was key.

_Meanwhile…_

They had left the garage now, moving to a second-story window.

"So he's your older brother."

Alex was gladder than words to have Sean back and the two of them had easily picked up right where they left off: a scathing, sarcasm-laden relationship held together by mutual enjoyment of truly obscene jokes. Of course, it helped that Alex and Sean just plain liked each other.

Explaining about Scott had been weird, though.

Put simply, "Yes." Although the boy was physically younger, Scott was Alex's big brother.

Just like Alex was his.

Sean looked down at the lawn and said, mildly disbelieving, "The one getting his ass kicked by a little girl."

Alex stepped forward to get a good look for himself. The kids were kicking a soccer ball across the grass. Scott had the ball when Alex first looked, although Ororo quickly managed to steal it.

Maybe they should take a break from talking engines for Alex to teach Scott a bit about sports.

"Shut up," he told Sean. "He's letting her win."

"Uh-huh," Sean replied, deadpan.

"Hey, you want my help or not?"

"Look how completely shut up I am."

Apparently, Sean wanted his help. He did not stay shut up for long, though, adding a few seconds later, "I think I missed this more than anything else. Way more than you."

Alex punched him—not hard, but hard enough to count as a retort. "Should be good, but you know better than me."

Sean nodded. He climbed onto the window. "Let's hope it still works."

And, with a leap and a shout, Banshee took once more to the skies.

Alex watched him from the same window and decided Sean was probably right about missing flight more than he missed Alex. That had to be amazing, flying.

The kids stopped and clapped their hands over their ears.

"Sorry, dorks!" Alex called, once he thought they'd hear him.

Scott answered with the universal hand sign for peace and courtesy.

Alex cracked up.

"Scott!"

"Sorry, Professor!"

Alex laughed so hard he thought he might need to sit down before he fell down.

There was no sweeter feeling in the world, after all, than being home.

**The End.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...the end of the story, that is. The series is far from over and the next installment will be posted soon.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment or kudos! I really appreciate it.


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